The city’s retail scene is thriving as well. 1111 Lincoln Road is home also to Alchemist, a glistening fifth-floor glass cube stocked with designer goods from the likes of Azzedine Alaïa and Delfina Delletrez. Nearby, society fixture–turned–boutique owner Monica Kalpakian holds court at her year-old home and accessories shop, ETC. The place is a cabinet of curiosities stocked with pieces brought back from Kalpakian’s global travels: a tray of fossilized wood and silver from Portugal, say, or a diamond-accented bracelet made of vinyl beads from western Africa. Kalpakian, too, feels she has Art Basel to thank for her store’s success. “During Basel, everyone gets what I do,” says the Argentine-born art patron, who sits on the boards of London’s Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. “I sell the same amount in that one week that I do during the entire rest of the year.”
More than any other boutique, however, it’s The Webster that best embodies the city’s move to a more elevated sense of style. Founded by fashion veterans Laure Heriard Dubreuil (who’d done time at Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent) and Milan Vukmirovic (who co-founded the cult Parisian concept shop Colette before holding top design positions at Jil Sander and Gucci), the three-story emporium inhabits a restored 1939 Art Deco masterpiece in Miami Beach. Exuding impeccable taste, sumptuous materials, and pitch-perfect tailoring for both men and women, it’s a significant departure for Miami, one that relates right back to Art Basel.
“People had this image of Miami as either for elderly people or for the most tacky people on the planet,” says Dubreuil. “Art Basel changed it to a more sophisticated, refined place. We still have the tacky, too. It’s that mix that I love.”
The Webster has also championed art and artists, hosting a plethora of parties during the fair and mounting salon-like gallery shows year-round, all of which further cements the position of both the store and the city as a nexus of art, fashion, and design.
On the mainland, the best place to experience this cultural intersection is the Design District, a once derelict section of town that sits just across a causeway from Miami Beach. Here, over the course of a decade or more, developer and art collector Craig Robins has staged his own art-minded urban renewal, replacing warehouses with galleries, restaurants, and, increasingly, elite fashion boutiques. Today you’ll find Marni, Tomas Maier, and Maison Martin Margiela scattered among the home-design showrooms: beloved, one-of-a-kind spots like Luminaire and Niba, which vie for attention with new flagships from Alessi, Armani Casa, Moroso, and Poltrona Frau. Over the next couple of years, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier will be moving in, too.
“Miami has always been a much more impressive place than people realized,” says Robins. “Because it’s such a beautiful place, it’s been more associated with sun and fun than with culture. Now we’re getting to show off the other side of our city.”
The Design District also showcases two of the city’s top chefs, Michelle Bernstein and Michael Schwartz, whose restaurants here have earned them national attention and copious awards. Bernstein’s Sra. Martinez turns out tapas and other South American and Spanish specialties (the Catalan-style butifarra sausage, stuffed with duck and foie gras, is a standout), while her year-old café Crumb on Parchment does light soups, sandwiches, and salads, plus a bevy of classic American baked goods. Meanwhile, Schwartz’s industrial-chic Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, along with his six-month-old Harry’s Pizzeria, plays with the unsung bounty of South Florida in dishes such as shrimp and grits with house-smoked bacon, escarole, and wood-roasted tomatoes. (At Harry’s, the braised-fennel pizza and polenta fries are must-orders.)
