By Tali Jaffe-Minor
This year’s Bal Harbour Shops Creative Challenge winning entry by Gio Lee.
A self-portrait of artist Gio Lee.
The 2026 Bal Harbour Shops Creative Challenge winner is Milan-based Gio Lee. The 32-year-old Korean artist won over our esteemed panel of judges with his fantastical vision of Bal Harbour Shops. Following the prompt, What does your Bal Harbour Shops dream look like? Lee put forth a surrealist interpretation where “orchids are eating crying grapes, while silly flamingos are drinking $5,000 Dom Pérignon from martini glasses,” he explains. “Somehow, all these absurd elements come together to create a visual dialogue that feels fuchsia, floral, Floridian, and fashion-forward.”
Here, Lee, who’s also a Lecturer of Embroidery & Materials and Fashion Illustration at Istituto Marangoni Milano, shares more about the process of creating his illustration and the importance of the hand-made.
What drew you to the Creative Challenge in the first place?
I came across a post about the competition on FIDA’s Instagram. As I started looking into the competition and Bal Harbour Shops, three keywords immediately stood out to me: tropical, surreal, and luxury. I was instantly drawn in, because these are three elements that I often explore in my own work as an illustrator and fashion designer.
I was really excited by the idea of bringing them all together and developing a project around them. I was also particularly intrigued by the opportunity to navigate a creative direction for a commercial space. It felt more tangible and closer to the kind of work I enjoy doing professionally than a traditional art competition. There was something very fashion-oriented about that.
As a fashion designer and freelancer, I’m used to thinking about how to translate a creative vision into something that works within a commercial context. I love that balance: creating a distinctive visual world, telling a story, and finding a way to make it resonate within a real-world setting. The competition felt like a wonderful opportunity to explore exactly that.
What did you hope your illustration would communicate with the judges, and ultimately our readers?
I wanted the humor to come across to both the judges and the readers. Although the illustration is two-dimensional, I wanted to create a scene, allowing the viewer to witness a little narrative unfolding.
I think humor is something AI still can’t replicate. Humor is still very much a human thing. Creating something that contains a little bit of soul is something I think many illustrators, and really anyone working in the arts, are thinking about right now.
Tell us a little about the cast of characters that populate your illustration.
I run a brand called Bryan Doodle. And we deliver our mood and the concept of each collection through an illustrated story. So, every collection has a story and characters behind it. It was the same for this project as well. When I was looking at the atmosphere of Bal Harbour Shops, a story came to mind right away about two flamingos. The drawing, the composition, and the outfits all started from there.
Meet our Finalists
Of the hundreds of entries that flooded our inbox, these three stood out to our judges. Congratulations to our runners up Daniela Campo Floyd, Michael Giron, and Oksana Goldberg!
