Instagram influencer hotspot Miami Design District is continuing to expand and attract some of the hottest luxury and fashion brands. A selection of new retailers including Maison Margiela, Palm Angels, ARES Design and KREWE have opened in Miami Design District. The brainchild of Miami-developer Craig Robins, Miami Design District is a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, lined with luxury boutiques, fine dining destinations and rich art and cultural programming.

Palm Angels is an italian luxury streetwear fashion house founded by designer and photographer Francesco Ragazzi. The Palm Angels location is their first store in Miami, located at 173 NE 40th St. The design recreates the atmosphere of a swimming pool, through materials, graphic interventions and evocative messages. The pool theme expands to the shop-windows fixtures, characterized by round corners and mosaic cladding. A special counter, covered in ceramic tiles, displays a “No Diving” warning. While displays are designed to highlight the products 'artworks' qualities, the spatial container is devised to be re-programmable and flexible: furniture and displays are mobile and can be rearranged to accommodate exhibitions, live performances, talks and events. The new store design has been developed by the Milan based creative agency April, in tight collaboration with Palm Angels founder and creative director, Francesco Ragazzi.

An art director trained in fashion communication and a photographer, Milan-born Francesco Ragazzi started Palm Angels in 2011 as a photographic documentation of LA's skater culture. The endeavor evolved into a book, published by Rizzoli in 2014, and subsequently into clothing in 2015. Palm Angels stems from an Italian take on American culture and subcultures. It merges an appreciation for sartorial codes and a joy for fabric with a proclivity for using clothing as identity tropes and cultural signifiers.

Maison Margiela introduced its new store concept in the US with a flagship boutique at 142 NE 41 St. in Miami Design District. The store concept is developed by Dutch architect Anne Holtrop and reflects the evolved visual language established at the house by creative director John Galliano. The design was first introduced in the gypsum-cast set at the Artisanal Autumn/Winter 2018 show, and it interprets the Maison’s iconoclast codes in façade and interiors. The store is an abstract and inviting environment rooted in the notion of appropriating the inappropriate.

The 2,615 SF boutique spans over two levels and displays the complete range of Maison Margiela’s Co-Ed collections, men’s and women’s ready to wear, accessories, shoes, small leather goods, as well as jewelry, eyewear and fragrances. The flagship boutique features defining structures of architecture including walls and columns which appear as detached objects.

Artisanal furnishings reflect and alter ideas of familiarity. Hand-cast individually in textile molds, the surfaces of the plaster walls and columns retain the memory of fabric texture and evoke the notion of an irreproducible hand-spun tactility. Misfit furniture is designed in the memory of classic objects, deconstructed in form. The technique of décortiqué further materializes in shelves, display tables and seats carved in stained travertine, the natural indentations filled with colour-contrasting epoxy resin in optical white.

Maison Margiela is a fashion house founded in Paris in 1988 by Belgian designer Martin Margiela. Iconoclast and irreverent, the Maison presents Haute Couture, women’s and men’s ready-to-wear, its contemporary line MM6, accessories, fine jewellery, fragrances and interior design. In 2014, John Galliano took over the creative direction of the Maison. Mysterious and unconventional, a radical core intertwined with a non-standard elegance, Maison Margiela remains classic yet visionary, daring yet ambiguous.

Other new concepts to open in Miami Design District include luxury Italian coachbuilder ARES Design, who merges traditional hand craftsmanship with advanced technologies to create limited editions and one-off bespoke cars and motorbikes, and Children’s retailer Kids Atelier, who curates the world's most fashion-forward children's brands including Dolce and Gabbana, Versace, Moncler, Stone Island, Givenchy, DSquared, Comme des Garçons. New York based Broadway, film, television and acting coach and renowned theatre director, Matthew Corozine recently debuted the Matthew Corozine Studio, Inc. Miami (MCS), offering acting classes based on the transformational work of the Meisner technique, with classes taking place on an ongoing basis. Additionally, The New Orleans-based Eyewear brand KREWE has brought their traveling Tiny House to Miami Design District where guests will be able to browse a sampling of their handcrafted sun, optical and ACTIVE collections.