Internationally renowned designer Naeem Khan chooses Miami as his home base to further grow his fashion empire.
Naeem Khan in his New York City showroom, surrounded by some of the elaborately beaded gowns that have won him fans from Beyoncé to First Lady Michelle Obama.
When designer Naeem Khan, who is best known for creating elaborately beaded gowns for women like First Lady Michelle Obama, Lea Michele, Beyoncé, and Jennifer Lopez, decided to move his international production to an American city, he knew exactly where he wanted to go. “Miami will be the perfect place,” says Khan, who plans to relocate his operation to the Magic City in the next two to three years. “What interests me about Miami is that it’s so culturally diverse. You have people from all over the world, and geographically it’s so beautifully located that you have access to the world from here. There is so much art and craft available in Miami because of the Latin culture, in which craftsmen are used to doing things by hand. The weather is amazing, the tax breaks are amazing, and it’s so close to New York that I can be [here] within two and a half hours, so why not?”
Khan struck a deal last year to rent a massive waterfront property owned by the city of Miami at 1175 NW South River Drive, an area that’s currently used mostly for boat building. In exchange for creating many new jobs at his headquarters, the designer will get a deeply reduced rent and tax incentives. To accommodate his operation—which at the moment is divided between New York City, Mumbai, Italy, and France—Khan will erect a bold new building to replace what’s currently on the site. The location is expected to serve as a community magnet as much as a clothing studio, in which more than 100 craftspeople will be based.
“We’re going to build a magical place where the minds of art meet,” he says. “It’s not going to be just a place for my production and design facilities. It is going to be large enough to have conferences, to have dialogues between architecture and fashion, and have the world of art meeting in this place.” Khan is currently in conversation with several architects who are, as he puts it, “of an international standard” (his friends include major players in the field such as Zaha Hadid and Chad Oppenheim).
Models getting ready backstage at the Spring 2015 show in New York.
When the building is completed in a couple of years, all of the company’s creative and production departments will relocate to Miami, although sales, public relations, and the line’s colorful biannual runway shows will remain in New York City. To ensure that newly hired staff can create his handcrafted pieces, artisans from Khan’s facility in Mumbai—where his family has specialized in heavily detailed embroidery for generations—will come to Miami to provide training. Khan is also hoping that a Miami-based university will begin offering a fashion program. “The technique is dying,” he says of the craftsmanship that goes into his precisely made dresses, on which beads that are misplaced or too heavy can throw off a garment’s drape and fit and for which delicate tulle lace is made and applied by hand. “This craft runs in my blood, and I’d like to bring it to America and see it not die. It needs to be maintained.”
An added business perk for Khan is Miami’s proximity to South America, where his popularity is quickly growing, particularly with women looking for one-of-a- kind occasion-wear, including opulent wedding gowns. “Being so close will make it so much easier to do my couture and my high-end glitz and glam,” he says, adding that South Americans “will have access to come and work with me.”
Khan’s love of Miami isn’t new. He and his wife, Ranjana, a jewelry designer, have been spending time here for the past five years, ever since they bought a 50th-floor penthouse triplex apartment in the performing arts district. (He commutes so regularly between South Florida and his downtown Manhattan loft that he says the flight to Miami “is like getting on the bus.”)
The idea to relocate his production and create more US-based jobs was inspired by a visit to the White House at the very end of 2013. “The first lady and the president were asking me these wonderful questions about my business and about my life, and I just felt like I had to do something,” Khan recalls. “It’s very much an emotional thing for me, because of what this country has done for me and how this country has embraced me, with the first lady and movie stars wearing my things, and having a successful business. I want to give back to a country that has given me so much.” Neiman Marcus, Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Ave., 305-993-4620