Miu Miu's Design District Store Is Very Serious About Fashion

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Picture Miu Miu and Prada as two sisters walking down the street. One wears a Peter Pan collar dress with milkmaid braids and a set of loafers, skipping happily along, the other a pencil skirt with an intricate bejeweled blouse and stacked heels, barely cracking a smile. Miuccia Prada herself has noted the distinction between her two brands: "Miu Miu is not as complicated and though out as Prada. Rather than being young, Miu Miu is immediate. Prada is very sophisticated and considered; Miu Miu is much more naïve."

That naïvety, however, doesn't seem to exist at the newly open Miu Miu store in the Design District.

It's the cornerstone of the building, located where NE 2nd street meets 39th, and it is ever the sophisticated and serious structure. From the outside, the two-story building is almost entirely made of glass, but not so you can see in. Dramatic metal curtains span the facade, interrupted only by window displays and giant Miu Miu advertisements.

Walk in through its black marble entrance, however, and things start to become more colorful. The first floor is where you'll find accessories, bags, and footwear, divided into three large rooms adorned with Miu Miu's gold damask and floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

When you walk up Miu Miu's black marble staircase, you'll enter upon women's ready-to-wear, with pieces hung and laid out in a similar damask and mirror-clad setting. The lounge areas are furnished with velvet mohair seating in a soft color palette, which adds a bit of femininity in contrast to Miu Miu's aggressively modern metal counters and shelves found throughout the store.

At Miu Miu, serious architecture meets sartorial charisma, and who couldn't stand to have a little bit of the two in their lives?