It’s a punishing moment to be a fashion brand. From global tariff shifts and slowed consumer spending to the shuttering of e-commerce players and the fragility of wholesale networks, navigating the industry’s volatile ecosystem requires resilience, adaptability and conviction. Miista, the London-founded footwear brand known for marrying avant-garde silhouettes with Spanish craftsmanship, has spent the last decade building those muscles.
Founded by Laura Villasenin in 2010, Miista quickly gained a cult following, with its experimental shoes and recently launched ready-to-wear. But it’s the brand’s deeper commitments — community, craft and a refusal to chase growth for growth’s sake — that have become its greatest assets in today’s climate. Now, Miista is deepening those values with the launch of a direct-to-consumer (DTC) site designed to meet the operational and logistical complexity of a truly global business.
The consultancy firm has revised its forecast for the personal luxury goods market this year, now outlining three possible scenarios instead of one — something it hasn’t done since Covid.
“By the time we reached the pre-pandemic era, our dependency on wholesale was quite small,” says the brand’s CEO (and brother of the founder) Pablo Villasenin. “That really helped us navigate the difficulties of a very challenging moment like the pandemic and post-pandemic period. We had resilience by relying on our core customer base, who really stood by us and supported us.”
Unlike many brands that were forced to retrench post-2020, Miista’s strong DTC base became a launchpad for wholesale growth — what Pablo calls a “reverse model”, now split 70 per cent DTC and 30 per cent wholesale, with their fiscal year target for 2025 projected at €20 million. Supporting this evolution is a new sophisticated, headless commerce platform tailored to the brand’s three primary regions: the UK, the US and the EU. “Each of those regions has its own accounting and operational specifications, so we needed to treat them like standalone markets,” explains Pablo. “But we also wanted the frontend experience to feel like a unified global brand.”
The result is a modular, API-rich infrastructure designed to meet the logistical demands of a modern, cross-continental fashion business. Whether integrating with a new warehouse in the US, or launching a limited-edition collaboration, Miista’s latest system can flex quickly and cleanly.
This backend architecture — localised but seamlessly connected — is part of Miista’s long game: staying agile, scaling at a healthy pace and building supply chain infrastructure that reflects its values. For now, the company is focused on growing at its own speed. Miista is currently seeing 35 to 40 per cent month-on-month growth in its DTC business, an impressive figure by any standard, but refuses to pursue hyper-growth at the expense of its identity. “We don’t want explosive growth if it means sacrificing who we are,” says Pablo. “We’re reinvesting all our profits into the business. We know the rate at which we can grow sustainably and organically.”
A commitment to craft
In today’s luxury landscape, craft has become a valuable currency. Brands name-check ateliers and revive artisanal narratives to counter growing scepticism around quality and authenticity. But while many are only just beginning to centre ‘the maker’ in their storytelling, Miista has been committed to this for a while, with craft woven into the brand’s origins and embedded in every design decision.
Laura studied shoemaking at Cordwainers in London, but her appreciation for artisanship began much earlier, growing up in Galicia, Spain, surrounded by traditional textile crafts. That early exposure to slow, skilled making, instilled a lifelong respect for process. So when she launched Miista, the vision was clear: to create shoes that don’t yet exist, and to build the kind of rigorous, detail-obsessed infrastructure required to make them real.
“We kept talking about creating a space for experimentation,” she says. “A supply chain built around quality and detail. One where you control things, and where we can be a bit obsessed about where everything comes from and how we can improve it.” From the start, Miista focused on constructing a tightly managed European supply chain: sourcing premium leathers from Italy, Spain and Portugal, and producing shoes in artisan factories in Alicante. Laura brought her technical training to bear at every stage — from sketching and prototyping to material sourcing — channelling both the precision of a Cordwainer and the sensibility of a Galician craftswoman. The result is footwear that often feels like it shouldn’t exist: asymmetric boots with toe caps, heels shaped like broken columns, and sculptural sandals.
“It’s definitely a huge draw for our customers,” the founder says. “You come to Miista because you know you’ll find product here you can’t get anywhere else.” It’s all part of the brand’s ‘the opposite thing’ mantra; a design and production philosophy that champions doing what the rest of the industry isn’t — embracing risk and resisting trends.
It’s also something their community loves to see on social media. On Instagram, Miista frequently posts behind-the-scenes reels that trace the journey of a shoe from sketch to finished product. One recent highlight features the crafting of their first-ever sneaker, the Nikoletta, with hands shaping soles, stitching panels and assembling uppers in slow motion, which is nearing 7,000 likes.
The clothing play
In 2020, Miista made its boldest investment yet: establishing a clothing factory in A Coruña, Galicia. “We thought, ‘OK, now we can reinvest all of this into the bigger idea,’” says Laura. That “bigger idea” was twofold: to develop full ready-to-wear collections and build a vertically integrated supply chain that honours transparency and artisanship at every level.
It was also a response to an industry-wide crisis, the rapid erosion of skilled labour. “Over the years, we’ve seen a massive decrease in artisans — people retiring, a lack of people entering the trade,” she notes. Instead of accepting this decline, Miista took action. The team began collaborating with local schools and developing training programmes to reinfuse the region with its next generation of makers. “We’re trying to get as many young people into the making process as we can — trying to inject that little ‘making virus’ in them. There’s still a massive stigma around craft. It’s still often seen as labour rather than a creative, valuable practice.”
In 2021, Miista launched its first full clothing collection made in said factory, marking a bold leap from accessories into the broader design universe. At first, the pair assumed the transition would be seamless. “We thought, ‘Oh, we have this amazing community that likes everything we do — this is going to be an immediate success.’ But no, it wasn’t,” admits Laura. “The first two years were quite difficult.” Despite their loyal following, the brand was still largely perceived as a shoe company. But they remained committed, investing not in splashy campaigns, but in the same thing that had always defined Miista: craft.
“We focused on doing what we already knew how to do — showing the craft,” she explains. That meant documenting the making process, working directly with artisans and dressing the community organically. Miista created custom pieces for artists and friends of the brand, letting the clothing line find its rhythm without rushing the narrative. Slowly, it began to resonate. “We had amazing women contacting us directly — asking for costumes, or for a pair of shoes, or for a dress they saw and loved. Sometimes, those people were names we never could have imagined. Like when Madonna contacted us a few months ago.”
That organic momentum has begun to accelerate. “Especially in the last year, it’s been doing really, really well,” adds Pablo, noting that 20 per cent of the revenue now comes from clothing. In fact, the clothing side of the business is growing faster than footwear — a shift that validates years of careful groundwork.
As the brand begins to outgrow its existing production capabilities, it’s reinvesting with long-term intent — laying the groundwork (quite literally) for the next decade. “Once we saw that [ready-to-wear success], we began thinking on a bigger scale,” says Laura. The team has just broken ground on a new factory in A Coruña: a purpose-built, technology-driven manufacturing space designed to push the boundaries of what craft can look like when supported by innovation. “We want to combine tech and craft in a very advanced way, but where craft is at the same level, if not higher,” she explains. Scheduled for completion in February, the factory represents both a scaling of operations and a bold statement of intent; reimagining what a modern atelier can be when craft and innovation are given equal weight.
Building real connection
If craft is today’s favourite marketing buzzword, then community may just be its most overused companion — often invoked so loosely it loses all meaning. Not for Miista.
Since as early as 2012, the brand has prioritised real-life interaction, hosting experimental pop-ups and events in cities around the world that transform overstock and prototypes into moments of dialogue and discovery. “Our product isn’t conventional,” says Laura. “Sometimes, people need to touch it. It’s like meeting a friend in real life instead of over FaceTime — you connect more deeply in-person.”
Pop-ups and sample sales double as listening tools, generating rich, qualitative insights around fit, comfort and design preferences that feed back into product development. “There’s a deep connection with our customers; we learn so much from them,” says Pablo. That openness extends behind the scenes, too: ahead of a recent website relaunch, Miista surveyed nearly 2,000 customers for feedback, treating their audience not just as buyers, but as co-authors.
Other initiatives push this further, turning Miista’s physical spaces into platforms for emotional and creative expression. During a recent studio renovation in New York, the brand invited customers to destroy the old interior in a cathartic rage room — a release valve for shared anxiety during a time of political unrest. “We’ve always been vocal about how we feel socially and politically. Sometimes, that plays against us, but we’re not shy. We also see our space as a platform for our community, a space they can use,” says Laura.
This emphasis on physical interaction has shaped how Miista approaches marketing, too. Rather than traditional campaigns, it often creates participatory experiences that centre the customer. A recent example: a guerrilla-style campaign featuring footwear podiums carried into the streets of East London’s Hackney Central. “The whole idea was metaphorical,” she explains. “That women carry their own podiums every day. You go through daily struggles, juggling everything — so the message was, ‘You carry your own podium.’” The campaign struck a chord, reaching 13 million views across social platforms.
In an era defined by volatility, Miista has quietly built a model for what a modern fashion business can look like: creatively uncompromising, operationally agile and deeply rooted in values that go beyond the seasonal churn. Its refusal to conform — whether in design, growth, or brand-building — has allowed it not only to endure, but to evolve on its own terms. At a time when much of the industry is recalibrating or retreating, Miista is doing what it’s always done: forging a different path, one deliberate step at a time.
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