Miami Art Week — which brings together a number of art fairs, including Art Basel Miami Beach — is back on fashion form.
With activations beginning as early as Monday, the week will feature events and exhibitions from brands including Pucci, Cartier, Rabanne, L’artist, Hublot, Bvlgari, Maison Margiela, Gucci, Golden Goose, Balmain, Fendi and Bottega Veneta, among others. It’s a noticeable ramping up after last year, when the intersection of art and luxury fashion was a lesser focus.
Luxury brands are more closely aligning with fine art, hoping to position goods as artworks versus utilities, identifying art collectors as a rarified group with discretionary income. The art fairs also benefit, as they become more commercial and more consumer friendly. “Both industries seek to leverage each other’s cultural cachet,” Artnet News’s editor-in-chief Naomi Rea recently told Vogue Business.
Meanwhile, South Florida has experienced an influx of wealth, both fiat (nearby West Palm Beach is now known as ‘Wall Street South’) and crypto (Miami’s government successfully attracted a crowd of crypto investors and entrepreneurs). A number of brands, including Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Balenciaga, began accepting cryptocurrency payments in their Miami stores. It’s made Miami Art Week a fertile climate for brand-tech experimentation, as well as larger-than-life ‘storytelling’ opportunities that take advantage of Miami’s characteristically diverse, colourful culture.
“For us, it’s the amplification and connection between art and our maisons and what we do — we treat our products as art, and Art Basel literally is LVMH, just focused on a different medium. It aligns with everything that we are and that we represent,” says Corey Smith, LVMH head of diversity and inclusion, who oversees the luxury group’s annual Culture House during the week. “There is an absolute connection between luxury, art, tech, media and culture, and these are the things that LVMH celebrates daily with our clients in our maisons. [This fair] brings a bunch of people together from all walks of life, but if you are at Art Basel, you certainly have art in common.”
Miami’s enduring appeal
South Florida has become a year-round hotspot in the years since the pandemic, and brands are hoping to appeal to those who have relocated there. In 2022, Miami was one of the fastest-growing regions for luxury in the US, Morgan Stanley reported. The diversity of the audience is uniquely valuable, Smith says. “We could do this in any other city or time of year… but the power of Miami specifically — the power of Art Basel — is that it attracts people from all over the world. For LVMH, it is one of the major hubs to our Latin American properties.”
LMVH-owned Hublot has had a presence during Miami Art Week since 2012, with artist collaborators including Shepard Fairey and Takashi Murakami. With art and design being key pillars for the brand, this presence has always felt organic, says Hublot North America and Caribbean president Natacha Lamour. The city is an essential market for the brand, Lamour says, as well as the maison’s US headquarters. Miami has consistently been one of the watch brand’s top-performing markets in North America and the US. “We not only understand this vibrant community, but we are deeply connected to it. As Miami continues to solidify its position as a premium luxury retail destination, attracting a diverse and international clientele, we are committed to nurturing and expanding these valuable relationships,” she adds. This year, it will introduce the latest designs made in collaboration with 2019 Hublot Design Prize winner Samuel Ross, founder of A-Cold-Wall.
Hublot is not alone. In recent years, brands including Acne Studios, Moncler, Burberry, Balenciaga and Gucci have opened stores there. “What started as an art fair has evolved into a global cultural and creative epicentre,” says David Grutman, investor and hospitality scion whose Groot Hospitality owns a number of top restaurants, hotels and clubs in the area. “Art Basel has put Miami on the map, providing tremendous economic vitality [and] fuelling local business growth.” As the owner of numerous venues, Grutman has seen the week’s impact last all year round across multiple sectors, especially hospitality. Despite brands seemingly having taken a bit of a break last year, he says, Art Basel has become known for a heavy fashion presence. “We always call it ‘Fashion Basel’, to be honest with you.”
How brands are showing up this year
While the official Art Basel Miami Beach calendar commences on 6 December, brands are already up and running. Gucci has a public snow globe installation in Miami’s Design District, including reproductions of Gucci luggage and a backdrop of miniature buildings that hold importance to the brand. Gucci also commissioned a series of ‘floating lips’ murals with artist Corydon Cowansage, near its boutique. (Last year, it added a men’s-only store to the Design District, after opening a boutique there in 2017.) Bottega Veneta will display its furniture collection made in collaboration with design brand Zanotta; called The Ark, it features furniture made to look like animals, with some pieces exclusive to Miami. Jewellery brand L’artist will unveil works created with artist Meskit from nearly 100 carats of lab-grown diamonds.
Pucci — coming to the fair for the first time — has a Pucci Fun Fair at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, conceived by artistic director Camille Miceli. The immersive adventure space includes interactive games with the brand’s psychedelic, signature aesthetic woven throughout. The goal, according to a Pucci spokesperson, is to bridge fashion, art and culture in a way that resonates with both local and international visitors. “The American market is incredibly important to us, and Miami in particular plays a key role in connecting us with the vibrant energy of South Florida. It’s a dynamic and diverse market that perfectly aligns with Pucci’s bold, joyful spirit,” says the spokesperson. “It’s an ideal location to reinforce the brand’s legacy.”
For the past three years, LVMH has hosted a Culture House during the week, in which it exhibits the works of diverse artists, hosting panel discussions and events. Originally launched due to the week’s overlap with International Day of Persons with Disabilities, it has since expanded into a five-day pop-up gallery representing the works of female artists, queer artists, people of colour and those with disabilities. This year, talks will include discussions on entrepreneurship and influencers, and speakers will include model-turned-perfumer Chris Collins (whose products are sold at Sephora), alongside presidents of some of the company’s brands, such as Repossi, Volcan de mi Tierra (a tequila company) and Maison Francis Kurkdjian — in addition to the artists represented in the gallery. (LVMH does not take a percentage of sales from works sold.)
Some see an opportunity to expand brand storytelling in more explicit ways. To coincide with its 140th anniversary, Bvlgari will display eight of its heritage pieces in an exhibit in the Miami Design District. In recent years, the brand has not had a presence during the fair, but is now using the week to bring its exhibition to the US. Cartier is showcasing its Trinity collection (known for three interlocking bands) with a pop-up exhibit outlining its 100-year history through five distinct spaces. Maison Margiela is collaborating with tattoo artist Kozo on customised, signed Margiela pieces (including Tabi boots, Replica sneakers, three handbags and Gentle Monster sunglasses), with pieces displayed in the windows of its Design District store. Repossi will host a photo exhibition featuring women in Tanzania who mine for gems.
Art Basel, which started out as a Swiss art fair for artists and galleries in 1970, has become more commercial and consumer-focused. In June, it opened a concept store for the Basel edition of the fair in Switzerland, which it repeated in October in Paris. This year, the Art Basel Shop will arrive for the first time in Miami. Curated by Sarah Andelman, co-founder of Parisian concept store Colette, it will include region-specific lifestyle products that range from $5 to $13,000, and there will be three separate locations that are, unlike the fair, accessible to the general public. Similar to a museum gift shop, goods include beach towels, tie-dye T-shirts, scarves, sunglasses and Christmas ornaments, all made in collaboration with artists or referencing Art Basel as a cultural destination (such as interpretations of the official Art Basel uniforms).
What about tech?
A few years ago, Web3 and NFTs were all the rage at Art Basel, marking the most culturally relevant topic for fashion and catering to the crypto crowd that has descended upon South Florida. In years past, Rtfkt has hosted a big dinner and Syky has hosted an intimate lunch. Prada invited some of its NFT holders to attend a DJ show, and Gmoney’s 9dcc held a treasure hunt. Timex unveiled NFT-twinned watches that displayed PFPs (collectible profile picture NFTs).
Since then, Web3 projects have faced a more tempered climate. It hasn’t disappeared, but the focus is less prominent. Mmerch, for example, a Web3 fashion brand with strong ties to the artist community, will reward people for “checking in” to the various art fairs in Miami this week using their NFC-chipped Mmerch hoodies with tokens, a limited-edition cap or a one-of-one Mmerch-Seedphrase hoodie (which is the brand’s most recent collection).
Rabanne, in a new Arts Factory project, is highlighting the tension between culture and tech. The project, in partnership with media company Dazed, is an effort to identify and highlight a “new generation of digital image-makers”. This year is the first edition, with candidates prompted to “visualize new realities”. The winner, Lucy Ellis, will live-edit animated works in a large space at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Her work references explores the physical proximity between humans and devices, often with found objects and outdated tech gadgets.
Her struggles to produce her craft with new methods mirror those of fashion’s creatives: “I’m always in battle with wanting to still use very old, outdated mediums while trying to adapt and stay up-to-date with modern technologies. I feel as if technology moves so fast, my skills become obsolete within a year.”
Another aspect that art and fashion communities have in common? They like to party. The official merch for the new Art Basel Store merch says it all, with new tees that read, “Miami Beach P[art]y” (pictured at top). That takes less of a learning curve, with VIP dinners and celeb-attended parties the long-standing fare. “We are going to do some cool receptions and obviously want to have some fun in Miami,” Smith says. This year, the theme is, fittingly, Latin Night, with an invitation-only dance party with Grammy-nominated Latin DJs. “We are centring the art,” he says. “And we are focused on creativity, luxury, lifestyle and culture — and that is all the things that Culture House represents.”
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