About Us
Our story began in 1966 when we first opened up shop in Westwood Village in Los Angeles, California, right across from Bruin Theater and a mile from the UCLA campus. As immigrants from China and the Philippines who came to the U.S. to complete our master's and doctoral degrees while simultaneously working to making a living, we eventually pulled enough resources to open up a boutique clothing shop that sold hand-beaded women’s dresses from Hong Kong and also did custom tailoring for men’s suits. We then expanded into local, ready-made clothing and were successful enough to open a chain of retail stores throughout southern California.
After China opened up in 1979 to the outside world, we returned to China and became the first sole distributor of all hand crocheted and hand embroidered women’s garments to the U.S. in the 1980’s. We expanded our business into the wholesale realm and manufactured our Lim's crochet and embroidered women's clothing in both Shanghai, China and locally in the U.S. to various retail stores, catalog companies and department stores such as Nordstroms until the early 2000s.
After more than 40 years in the business, we still have many of the vintage Lim’s handmade goods to share with our customers, and we work hard to ensure that the quality and wearability of our vintage items remains intact. We now work on a smaller scale, using our unique vintage hand crocheted and embroidered fabrics to come up with new designs and modern cuts. We take care not to waste materials and to use primarily deadstock fabrics. We remain an intimate family owned and operated business after all these years.
