The name Mimchik is a made-up word, a portmanteau of its two founders’ names. Three and a half years in, the Los Angeles womenswear label has grown considerably larger than either of its founders anticipated when they sat down for coffee in January 2022 and discovered, somewhat to their own surprise, that they had been waiting for each other.
Mia Kazovsky had been best friends with Emma Marciano’s older sister Olivia before life sent them in different directions. Years later Mia reconnected with Olivia and was introduced to her younger sister. Two women with the same vision to create an independent fashion label were finally in the same room.
The backgrounds they brought to that table were different in almost every way. Mia had studied fashion design at the Pratt Institute and arrived at Mimchik with technical fluency and a clear understanding of what building a brand from scratch takes. Emma, whose father is Guess co-founder Maurice Marciano and mother is footwear designer Nathalie Marciano, had spent years around fashion but was intent on finding her own way into it.
“I’ve always been surrounded by fashion,” she says. “It’s something I’ve always been very passionate about, though I actually went to school to study documentary filmmaking at NYU. But when I met Mia, we instantly clicked. Even though I didn’t have the technical background at the time, it made sense.”
When they sat down to build their first collection, Los Angeles was the only starting point that made sense.
“We wanted Mimchik to be about creating beautiful, well-made clothes to have a good time in,” says Mia. “At the time we were making everything in downtown LA sourcing deadstock fabric—loading up the car, bringing fabric to the factory, and getting samples made. The brand is still very LA-rooted. Our main focuses are tailoring and leather, but it was denim in those early days as well.”
By October 2022, only nine months after that first coffee, Mimchik had launched with a party and a small run of pieces. The clothes sold out quickly and word spread in the right directions. Stylists, then celebrities, were beginning to take interest in the brand.
“When Kristen Stewart wore our designs, that was really cool,” says Emma. “She’s somebody whose style I loved growing up.”
Even in those first months, Mimchik was unmistakably its “own thing.” The brand’s mix of tailoring, leather, and ease of proportion resisted easy categorization.
“There’s plenty of fun in fashion, but we wanted to make clothes that we wanted to wear or wanted to see the women and men in our lives wear,” Mia says. “There’s this shared vision of going out party attire that’s not too on-the-nose or overly sexy. We just started having fun and playing with proportions. We even brought men’s-inspired pieces into the Mimchik world.”
Mia says the brand’s first proper pop-up put them on the map. Mimchik eventually took over a space in West Hollywood where a Jacquemus store now sits, built it out, and let the clothes do the rest.
“We were really fortunate to be there,” she says. “We invited all our friends and created a fun vibe and atmosphere, but I think the clothes spoke for themselves too. You can go to a party, but you don’t often leave buying a $1,200 leather jacket. That’s what was happening!”
The label also began landing in stores that had existed for both founders as aspirational benchmarks. “FRWD and Elyse Walker were some of the big stores where I thought, ‘well, maybe one day we’ll get into them,” Emma says. “When it happened we were freaking out.”
Mimchik’s current collections often build on each other rather than beginning from scratch, the brand’s three-year foundation giving them something to pull from. Fit and how a garment works with the body has been central to the practice from the beginning.
“Whether it’s the cinched belt on the fur coat or the seam details on a dress, the body is always considered,” Mia says. Their Twist Trouser for example, a unisex signature since the very first capsule, keeps coming back in new iterations. Then there are the happy accidents, like a cinched button-down Emma wasn’t sure about that became one of the brand’s best sellers.
“I always had concerns about it because it was really complicated to make,” she says. “But you need to be nimble and listen to what the people are wanting. Of course we’re aware trends exist for a reason, but we’re the antithesis of fast fashion. We’re moving slowly and making things to last and outlive TikTok trends.”
The fabric now comes from mills in Italy and Japan, sourced through a small team of contractors whose specialty is finding the right material for the brand. Though the clothes are now manufactured overseas, the sensibility hasn’t traveled far from where it started. Collections typically start with vintage references: pieces Mia and Emma find, take apart, and rebuild as their own.
“We sit down and ask what’s on our minds, what we want to see,” Mia says. “What’s the ‘mood?’”
The brand’s fall-winter collection was built around a mood as much as a palette: burgundy, snakeskin, and dark fur.
“We were gravitating towards something moodier,” Mia says, “We’re always making pieces that you’ll want to come back to time and time again, season after season. Whether it’s the cinched belt on the fur coat or the seam details on a dress, the body is always considered.”
Fashion of the 90s was also a source of inspiration, with its sense that the person wearing the clothes has a life more interesting than the clothes themselves.
“I also look at old pictures of my mom for design inspiration, who I think is one of the most chic people I’ve ever come across,” Emma says. “I do think the Mimchik woman lives in different cities, but there’s definitely a version of her that is a true LA girl.
“To us the LA archetype is a little bit more cinematic, poetic, and artistic than the trope you might think of. We’re more interested in the romanticized, ‘older-Hollywood’ side of it.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 16.
Hair and makeup by Tanya Renelt, The Rock Agency. Model: River Wheaton, Ford Models.
