MIAOU

MIAOU was founded in 2015 in New York by Argentinian-American designer Alexia Elkaim as a contemporary luxury womenswear brand specifically focused on what Elkaim described as 'a deliberately-body-conscious-and-Latin-American-aesthetic contemporary-luxury vocabulary anchored to vintage-corsetry and Latin-American-feminine sensibility.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2015 NYC-anchored contemporary-luxury-womenswear brands. The MIAOU vocabulary settled around several recurring elements: deliberately-body-conscious corsetry-and-bustier dresses (the brand's defining product category since 2015 — the iconic MIAOU Campbell corset and MIAOU Lex corset have been the brand's anchoring products), deconstructed denim with deliberately-body-conscious cut-out detailing, the brand's iconic MIAOU body-conscious knit programme, deliberately-Latin-American-aesthetic ready-to-wear with hand-printed motif references, and a colour palette anchored to washed-cream, oxblood, ecru, washed-pink, washed-charcoal, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red, electric-blue, marigold-yellow, and the iconic Latin-American-feminine-aesthetic colour combinations. The brand is independent and held by Elkaim. MIAOU operates with no permanent retail of its own, distributing through SSENSE, MATCHES, Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa, Bergdorf Goodman, the Webster, the major US-and-European luxury department stores, and a curated set of contemporary-luxury-womenswear specialty retailers globally. The brand has been one of the more culturally specific post-2015 NYC-anchored 'body-conscious-and-Latin-American-feminine-aesthetic' brands.