What to do when your family owns a knitwear factory in China and they tell you business is suffering? For Wei Lin, it meant calling her ex-roommate and friend Mijia Zhang — a Parsons School of Design grad who’s done stints at Christopher Kane and Nike — identifying a void in the market (affordable sporty and novelty knits for the younger generation) and starting a brand. “We wanted to do something different,” Lin explained of PH5’s New York Fashion Week debut. “Knitwear is very expensive nowadays and most things look the same. Our knits are colorful and done with new techniques — we even sourced materials used in sneakers.”
The result was athletic-inspired and colorful, from midlength T-shirt dresses with pleated inserts to colorful striped maxidresses and jumpsuits. It was a cool proposition, but we’ll have to wait and see if the young kids agree.