Sami Miró: How the Vintage Designer Became One of the Celebrities She Dresses
A Google search for “Sami Miró,” the 31-year-old vintage designer, shows a collection of her photos with ex-boyfriend and heartthrob Zac Efron before presenting any of her work in fashion. Her SMV logo, representing her Sami Miró Vintage collection, that is carefully stitched into recycled denim, leather and faux fur has been worn by not just her former beau, but the likes of models Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. “Model” is another title Miró holds proudly, as Justine Harman points out right away in her profile of Miró for Elle, “Sami Miró has one of those ridiculous titles that can’t exactly fit on a business card: vintage curator/marketing executive/model/future lifestyle blogger….” She was chosen to be a part of The Force is Female Nike campaign in 2018 with five other “badass women in Los Angeles all making moves in their respective industries…”, according to the lifestyle website MISSBISH. Other moves Miró has made includes modeling for the Yeezy Season 6 campaign and opening the For the Lost fashion line with Forever21. Her projects featured on her personal website and Instagram present the tension between her as an individual versus her as a social phenomenon through her celebrity-circulated SMV outfits — which have projected Miró into the spotlight of her own photoshoots as a fashion influencer — heavy press coverage of her brand balanced with more personal Instagram posts, and the accessible Forever21 collection. Sami Miró evolves into a designer-as-celebrity phenomenon by creating “in front of the camera” and “behind the camera” personas through designing vintage looks for celebrities and modeling for famous campaigns.
After using Efron as her first celebrity “client”, Miró began dressing other celebrities (and herself) in her vintage collection and still uses paparazzi photos to create influential social media posts about her own fashion label. She escorted Efron to the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, where she styled him in her “first custom vintage Z bomber” jacket with patches of different denim, according to the post of the jacket on her SMV-specific Instagram account. As the “Z” in the jacket’s description stands for Zac, he is the impetus for her SMV collection as a whole, as reported by Cosmopolitan. Her constantly-in-the-spotlight relationship with one of Hollywood’s favorite heartthrobs provided Miró with the perfect segue to making a name for herself in the fashion world she knew how she wanted to enter into. Not only was Efron wearing SMV at the awards show, but Miró was wearing her own Valentina bodysuit that she later dressed singer Selena Gomez in for her Revival tour and successfully sold out at her online store (as it is no longer available), as seen in Figure 1 below.
Recruiting Gomez to be a part of her celebrity stylist roster further catapulted the SMV brand and Miró’s fashion career into the spotlight specifically through Instagram. In describing how couture fashion designers exploited celebrity capital to popularize their brand, Pamela Church Gibson writes in her book Fashion and Celebrity Culture, “They may choose a model associated with their look but nevertheless possessed of her own cultural–and erotic–capital (Koda and Yohannan 2009).” By having the most followers on Instagram with 146 million users, Gomez reaches the largest audience possible on the social media platform when she posted about her vintage tour couture, which in turn helps Miró reach one of the largest audiences on social media by having Gomez as one of her ambassadors. To further utilize the celebrity endorsement of her collection, Miró’s usage of paparazzi photos to gain publicity emphasizes her design work as a social phenomenon, which categorizes her “behind the camera” section of her personal website that focuses on who she has dressed. Jenner, for example, is not just another pretty girl clad in the classic SMV bodysuit already donned by Gomez and Miró herself: Her paparazzi shot is an Instagram post for Miró (and her 194,000 followers) and a cover photo for a Vogue article. Like Efron, the way Miró leverages the media’s obsession with Jenner and who she is wearing paves the way for her work to be captured right on the spot and right on the model, as if Jenner is intentionally strutting down the street instead of a runway.
Shifting from the celebrities she dresses, Miró herself gains attention from the media that have been constantly snapping shots of her designs, as she employs an unorthodox approach to fashion blogging that distinguishes her “behind the camera” persona from her “in front of the camera” persona. Coverage, such as Vogue writing about Jenner wearing the Valentina bodysuit, accumulates into a portfolio Miró can keep to show her work, especially when more reputable publications like Nylon, Billboard and Teen Vogue give her label their platform. This level of notoriety forms a “press” section on her personal website that lists all of the articles written about her. But her publicity seems to strip away any authentic glimpse into Miró’s life, as traditional fashion blogs “revolve around the representation of fashion in the lifeworld of their authors and potential readers…. In a media culture which is increasingly self-reflexive and self-referential, fashion bloggers claim their own spaces of representation….” (Titton 205). What readers learn about Miró is mostly what is published about her, not by her, about her editorial fashion ventures. This unconventional way of blogging gives no personal or individual insight from Miró about how she defines herself, her pursuits and her looks. Miró’s voice does not guide the reader’s take on how she performs as a stylist or a designer, and these jargon-riddled descriptions of her collection coming from fashion journalists as opposed to the creator herself lack any accompanying anecdote or intimate details. However, her background in editorial and creative direction when it comes to her vintage collection and styling celebrity clients allows Miró to claim her space by styling, directing and producing her own Teen Vogue shoot about herself, as seen in Figure 2 below.
She utilizes her “behind the camera” creative skills and business education to gain control over the media’s impression of her as an “in front of the camera” persona. Additionally, Miró uses her Instagram stories to highlight her daily habits, which allow her followers to have a better insight into Miró as an individual than as a famous designer. On her Instagram profile, she has two story highlights — “Current Events” and “5am Yogi” — that document how closely she follows political news (and critiques it) and her workout regimen. These social media insights build a more personal narrative for Miró than interviews with her by reputable news outlets, as Titton discusses how “the narration of their self-identity is augmented, expanded, and altered by the incorporation of other narrative trajectories, stories, and events so as to form a distinct character, or persona” (209). Despite how a traditional fashion blogger tells their story through selfies and personally written posts, Miró narrates her life through fashion campaigns she has been a part of, such as Yeezy, her Teen Vogue spread and Playboy, interviews she has conducted with major magazines and personalized Instagram highlights.
Her last strategy as a designer-as-celebrity phenomenon is democratizing fashion by opening an affordable For the Lost collection with Forever21 aside from her expensive reconstruction of vintage wear under the SMV collection. Similarly, English model Kate Moss designed her own “inexpensive” line for Topshop, which proved to be a “lucrative partnership” for both brands involved, as Moss won the English award for Dress of the Year in 2008 and Topshop successfully opened in New York (Church Gibson). For Miró, her For the Lost collaboration with Forever21 in 2017 is her second attempt at working with the fast-fashion retailer with a large consumer base due to cost and availability. According to her interview with Refinery29, her first Forever21 collection was made up of “one-of-one vintage pieces” that “literally sold out within a few hours,” while the For the Lost capsule “is not vintage and more accessible so everyone can enjoy their favorite pieces instead of just one person” (Coscarelli). Rather than categorize this new collection as an indicator of social mobility through seemingly counterintuitive expensive second-hand clothing, Miró shows off that she can design for the everyday woman by catering to Forever21’s market, the non-Hadids and non-Jenners of society. Aside from the popular fast-fashion brand, Miró was the first womenswear designer to link up with FourTwoFour on Fairfax, a concept boutique with rotating collections, for a month-long pop-up shop of her SMV collection in May 2018, as seen in Figure 3 below.
By using social media, Miró prompts her Los Angeles-based followers to check out her vintage work in real life through the more exclusive experience of a pop-up shop, tapping into her celebrity persona as others such as rapper Tyler, the Creator have stores on Fairfax Ave., one of the most popular venues for these faux-intimate shopping experiences with brand-name curators. Her range in democratizing fashion, from working with Forever21 on a capsule to hosting a pop-up shop with FourTwoFour, proves Miró desires to have her clothes be more accessible beyond her celebrity clientele.
Sami Miró transforms from a designer to a celebrity by posting pictures of the celebrities she styles in her vintage looks and of herself modeling in famous campaigns for her “behind the camera” and “in front of the camera” personas, respectively, as seen on her Instagram and personal website. She uses three strategies — dressing celebrities and posting their paparazzi shots, using a “press” section on her website to blog unconventionally while using Instagram stories to show her personality, and democratizing fashion with an accessible Forever21 collection — to build her brand as someone who works in fashion and someone who is the subject of fashion. Church Gibson specifies this distinction: “The designer-as-celebrity does not simply mean that designers now have a trademark appearance as well as a house style; it also leads to press photographs of the designers themselves being featured as widely as those taken at their collections.” The tension between Miró being an individual and Miró being a social phenomenon explains how her identity as a designer is just one of her qualifiers in a long list — stylist, model, designer, producer, businesswoman — that makes the multihyphenate seem impersonal, as if her accolades raised her to a pedestal. But on the contrary, and most importantly, Miró’s work in fashion tells her childhood story of being raised by a single father and not being able to afford designer clothes. In her interview with Elle, Miró recounts having a more masculine taste in clothes from wearing her father’s hand-me-downs (Harman), while she told Teen Vogue how she “grew up with kids driving fancy cars to school right when they turned 16, wearing high-end designer clothes. I couldn’t afford those things, so I really found vintage as an alternative means to be able to wear the same designers, at a tenth of the price” (Brara). Both interviews depict how second-hand clothing both tells the story of Sami Miró and forms the narrative of Sami Miro Vintage. This dichotomy within the nomenclature — as seen in how the accent above the o in “Miró” is missing from her brand name, further perpetuates the individual vs. social phenomenon tension. The proper spelling of her name indicates Miró, the San Francisco native who goes to hot yoga at 5 a.m. every day, while the simpler version in the SMV name is her expensive label worn by the rich and famous, and where the two come together is stitched right into the vintage fabric.
Works Cited
Brara, Noor. “Why You Should Be Obsessed with Stylist and Vintage Pro Sami Miro.” Teen Vogue, Condé Nast, 26 May 2017, www.teenvogue.com/story/sami-miro-interview.
Coscarelli, Alyssa. “Forever 21’s Best-Selling Collaboration With Sami Miro Is Back.” Refinery29, Refinery29, 30 Aug. 2017, www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/08/170205/forever-21-sami-miro-collaboration-for-the-lost.
“Designers and Models Become Brands.” Fashion and Celebrity Culture, by Pamela Church Gibson, Berg Publishers, 2012.
Harman, Justine. “Sami Miró on Newfound Fame and Shopping With Zac.” ELLE, Hearst Magazines, 25 Apr. 2018, www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/interviews/a27493/sami-miro-profile/.
McCloud, Kristen. “Nike Celebrates a New SF AF1 Collection & Female Forces Making Moves in Los Angeles.” MISSBISH, 10 Jan. 2018, www.missbish.com/nike-celebrates-a-new-sf-af1-collection-female-forces-making-moves-in-los-angeles/.
@samimirovintage. “Photo of Z bomber.” Instagram, 13 Apr. 2016, www.instagram.com/p/BEKHLqmQ0Px/?utm_source=ig_embed
Titton, Monica. “Fashionable Personae: Self-Identity and Enactments of Fashion Narratives in Fashion Blogs.” Fashion Theory, vol. 19, no. 2, 2015, pp. 201–220.
Truong, Peggy. “Zac Efron’s Boo Sami Miro Actually Designed This Incredible Denim Bomber Jacket.” Cosmopolitan, Hearst Magazines, 6 Oct. 2017, www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a56864/zac-efron-sami-miro-design-denim-bomber-jacket-mtv/.
Miró, Sami. “Photo of Sami at FourTwoFour on Fairfax.” Instagram, photographed by Kristen Bromiley, 2 Aug. 2018, www.instagram.com/p/Bl_7oF9jaF2/
“Zac Efron’s Ex Sami Miro Reveals Inspiration behind Her Fashion Line Loved by Selena Gomez.” Scoopnest, 2016, www.scoopnest.com/user/Femail/738320532618289152-zac-efrons-ex-sami-miro-reveals-inspiration-behind-her-fashion-line-loved-by-selena-gomez.
