3.1 Phillip Lim: Showing His Bedside Manner

Phillip Lim, maker of streamlined, sporty modern garments, has retreated to the bedroom.

Backstage, his mood board was covered with images of intimate sleeping areas, and pasted with the words of Leonard Cohen: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

“It’s playing with the intimate setting of a bedroom, where you feel most exposed but most protected,” said the designer about his 3.1 Phillip Lim line — where fabric with the effect of quilted bed covers curved around the body, leaving patches of bare flesh.

This bedroom concept worked well because it was so far from the suggestion of boudoir fantasies.

Instead, the clothes remained sporty, the quilts and puffy bed covers used in contrast to crisp or light fabrics.

Lim described poetically the flashes of golden yellow as an inspiration of sun pouring through a bedroom window.

The result was a take on modern clothes that was romantic — a word not usually associated with this designer, but an experiment which worked.