Alexia Elkaim’s celebrity-loved, buzzy fashion label Miaou debuted her latest women’s ready-to-wear collection in Paris on Wednesday night.
“I designed this collection eight months ago. It was interesting because this season I was really excited about cleaner lines, and I wanted more simple silhouettes. I think like so much of Miaou has been about novelty, and I think this was an exploration of what that could look like with the kind of pieces that felt simplified. I think that’s a result of growing up with the brand and having started younger — this company is now seven years old,” Elkaim told WWD ahead of the show.
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She added that this is her first show debuting see now, buy now styles; rtw from the collection is currently available to shop on the brand’s e-commerce.
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“The collection is entirely see now, buy now and we’re dividing it into two to three drops. This is a new initiative that we’re doing,” Elkaim said, adding that while some pieces were custom designed for the show, a few of those shapes are available in different colors and prints.
Throughout the collection, titled “Go!”, the Los Angeles-based designer leaned into sportif elements — ideas that harkened back to her designs at the brand’s inception — while melding in signature corsetry and her brand’s ethos of offering subtle contrasts of “old and new world” through an intersection of French design and American style. The idea was echoed through the show’s Parisian ballroom-set venue, with opulent mirrors and chandeliers filling the space.
“I think the juxtaposition of bringing the old world into the new world is a common thread that we want to carry with this, and pretty much every season, which speaks to the corsetry. They’re all things that have existed for forever, but how we make it feel contemporary is the mission,” she said of the myriad corset layers offered on the site (these particular styles were not presented on the runway), including an updated Ari mesh halter corset top (a sister style to the popular Talia corset top donned by Selena Gomez this summer) in a new Emblem print inspired by French Haussmann architecture.
Expanding on her core offering on the runway, the designer continued to elevate the styles with collegiate colors and bold graphics, as seen through look one’s jersey-inspired minidress (also seen in the form of jersey and spandex T-shirts), look 10’s basketball shorts with latex zip-up fitted shirt or new denim bottoms and moto-inspired leather layering. Elkaim also introduced the Selena maxidress — a “sister of” her well-known Thais slip style — with updated cowl neck and exposed, sultry back — alongside plenty of edgy little sets and fitted dresses.
Alongside printed mesh, a continually successful material for the brand, Elkaim also utilized more cotton and viscose — which the designer described as super flouncy but feminine, wearable and versatile — than in previous seasons. “Finding the big sisters [to mesh],” she said of the expansion in materials.
In addition to rtw, the show marked Elkaim’s venture into accessories: three styles of shoes (pierced sandals, mules and skin-tight, thigh-high boots) designed in collaboration with Giaborghini; collaborative jewelry with Mondo Mondo, and debut handbags.