Miaou’s Alexia Elkaim is a Francophile through and through.
Although she was raised in Los Angeles and schooled in New York, Paris is her birthplace and its influence seeps into everything she does. Even the brand’s name was taken from the French spelling of “meow.”
When Elkaim travels back to Paris, she scours the markets of Montmartre in search of vintage elements to incorporate into her collection. Recently, the designer struck gold at the Marché Saint Pierre fabric shop, falling for unused rolls of rococo upholstery material that were cleverly reworked into nine limited-edition corsets.
Launching in celebration of Earth Day, the capsule also makes use of silk curtains sourced from Elkaim’s mother and grandmother, whose shared affection for French decorative arts was passed on to her.
Rather than fix what is not “baroque,” the designer chose to stick by her most popular corset styles like the Mara and Campbell, which were reintroduced in a robin’s egg blue floral and tonal green stripe, respectively.
Regenerative design has been a staple of Miaou since 2016 when it launched off the back of a single pair of upcycled jeans. The beatnik-inspired flares known as the Tommy proved so popular that Elkaim expanded the range to include corsets. This leap from 1960s denim to 1860s shapewear may seem like a big one, but for the designer, it is all part of a shared narrative.
“Corsets felt like the natural progression because they provided the same sense of novelty,” said Elkaim, whose capsule campaign imagery brings together the epoch-defining styles of Brigitte Bardot and Marie Antoinette.
The Earth Day collection is available to shop on Miaou’s e-commerce with prices ranging from $325 to $425. Fifty percent of all proceeds will be donated to One Percent for the Planet, a solutions based coalition working to better the environment.
