Model Eleanor Simon backstage at 3.1 Phillip Lim Spring 2024 at New York Fashion Week. Photo by Martin Romero
At the 3.1 Phillip Lim Spring 2024 show, Filipino stylist Melissa Levy and model Eleanor Simon help tell the Asian-American story.
Stylist and Vogue Philippines contributing fashion editor for US Melissa Levy called it in: we both cried – also Philip – with Eleanor, walked out onto the runway.
Levy, who had styled the 3.1 Phillip Lim show at New York Fashion Week for the Spring 2024 season, was speaking of the Filipino model Eleanor Simon. Simon began working as a model in the ‘80s– now, in her mid 50s, she’s still walking the runway.
Specifically, the runway of Phillip Lim, the Thailand-born designer of Chinese descent. It was the perfect one for Simon. “Can I tell you how much I adore Phillip Lim,” Simon writes, on a post-show high, a few hours away from a flight back to Chicago. The model flies in and out of New York almost weekly, making sure to get home in time for Sunday family dinner. “I am so proud that he is such a strong advocate for the Asian community. His actions resonate in all of us who sometimes feel that we don’t know what to do or how to navigate especially during a period of time when it was very turbulent for us here in the States. He is our voice.”
The 3.1 Phillip Lim show was the brand’s first since 2019. In the four years since, Phillip Lim the designer became an advocate against anti-Asian sentiments during the covid-19 pandemic. For Simon, who grew up in the Philippines before migrating to Chicago with her parents, it was a perfect alignment of energy and values. At the go-see, the 3.1 Phillip Lim team had her try on an outfit, and then to simply “walk strong, and with confidence,” Simon remembers. “It was easy because everything looked and felt so good. And to be honest, everything about this job felt so right.”
The job in question was the connection among Melissa Levy, Phillip Lim, and Eleanor Simon, the emotional trio Levy mentioned in her initial text to Vogue Philippines fashion director Pam Quiñones. “I felt so at ease working with Phillip and Melissa. I told them at the casting that I was with my people,” Simon narrates. “We had so much in common and so much to share and talk about. They had a vision for this show and I feel so blessed that I was able to be part of it. When the show ended, a roar of applause and beautiful, happy tears from many. A job well done.”
A job well done indeed, all around: while staying true to the sportswear in his brand’s DNA, Phillip Lim showed edgy occasionwear that was also full of energy and warmth. Of the 50-something looks Lim and Levy sent down the runway, each embodied to gratitude to be outside, in the world. It was smart, considered, and styled with the streets in mind.
50-something is also resonates with Simon, who turns 56 end of the month. “I feel so grateful, thankful, blessed to be still modeling in my 50s. There was a time when 30 was considered old,” Simon shares, noting that although walking runway “for the classics still has a long way to go, Phillip did a great job mixing us in.”
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