About

Jimin Lee is motivated by a unique aesthetic vision that undergirds all of her projects. Creative, intuitive, and endlessly curious, Lee is particularly intrigued by the power of clothes to transform everyday life.

As an entrepreneur with a keen nose for business and a discerning eye for artistry, Jimin Lee’s notable achievements during her thirty year career in fashion have spanned the globe and traversed 360 degrees of the fashion arena.

Born in South Korea and raised in the Philippines, Lee graduated from Brown University with a degree in French Literature and Semiotics. A talented musician as well as artist in her earlier years, Lee decided to dedicate herself to the world of fashion after earning an opportunity to work with Yves St. Laurent in the heady atmosphere of Paris in the eighties. Upon her return from Paris, Lee joined the Saks Fifth Avenue Executive Training program in New York City, becoming a product developer, subsequently progressing into the world of European high fashion at Genny as commercial sales and marketing director.

In 1994, Lee returned to Asia to join Joyce in Hong Kong, the renowned fashion retail group in the Asia pacific region, as General Merchandise Manager and Fashion Director. During her tenure at Joyce, Lee was credited with discovering and incubating up-and-coming fashion designers and labels, always on the forefront of intuiting fashion and lifestyle trends. She also launched the Joyce collection, a private label brand of Chinese-inspired clothing, and the Joyce Beauty business as a platform for then-independent beauty brands, creating one of the first beauty concept stores ahead of her global peers.

In 1999, she created her first independent fashion label, Jiminlee, designing, producing, and commercializing the fashion ready to wear collection to reach an international clientele through the world’s most selective retailers.

When a unique opportunity to move to China presented itself in 2002, Lee relocated her base to Shanghai to mastermind, design, and open one of the first world-class multi brand fashion emporiums in Shanghai at Three on the Bund, the landmark renovation project on Shanghai’s waterfront. In 2005, with the demand for upscale fashion on the rise and the emergence of Shanghai as the fashion capital of the East, Lee with co-founder, Angelo Negro - established Translatio, an innovative fashion and lifestyle retail management company, and a key partner to numerous international brands.

Lee’s most recent project, J. Cricket, launched in 2018, signals her return to her own design and to the creative medium. J. Cricket’s range of clothing and items are wardrobe highlights for the cosmopolitan and confident woman, offering up a soft power dressing kit that strikes the balance between casual comfort and worldly sophistication, perfectly melding all the worlds Lee has curated throughout her exceptional career.