Wynwood, Miami · opened October 2017

Antidote, the Wynwood boutique that sold only ethically made fashion

Antidote was a womenswear and accessories shop at 2613 NW Second Avenue in Miami's Wynwood Art District. Time Out Miami called it the neighborhood's first ethical fashion boutique when it opened on 26 October 2017. Google now lists the store as permanently closed.

The idea

Founder Sophie Zembra came to Miami from Paris. Before Antidote she had built Shopethik, a French online marketplace for ethical activewear and baby clothes, and she had trained as a textile designer. Her rule for the Miami shop was simple: every piece on the floor either followed fair-trade principles or used recycled materials.

She did not want the store to lecture. "We are not a teacher," she told Fashionista in 2018; the pitch was that ethical clothes should be the ones you want anyway. The store's own tagline, quoted by Interior Design, was "where conscious meets desirable". Elle México quoted her: fashion and sustainability "need not be mutually exclusive".

How it worked on the shop floor

Each price tag carried a QR code. Scanning it opened the brand's story: the materials, the workshop and how the piece was made. The racks rotated weekly, and the visual merchandisers paired pieces in unexpected combinations, according to VMSD.

The mix ran from established names such as Stella McCartney and Edun to small labels: Sarah's Bag clutches beaded in Beirut, Soko jewelry from Nairobi, Veja sneakers from Brazil, Luz organic cotton swimwear and Re/Done jeans cut from vintage Levi's. The labels page lists every brand the press named, with what made each one fit.

For Earth Day 2018 the shop planned its own organic cotton T-shirt, made in the USA, with 10% of sales going to the Surfrider Foundation.

The room

The Miami studio Atelier de Yavorsky designed the space with concrete, copper, oak and a pastel palette, plus a hand-painted plant mural. Store design has the details and the full credit list.

Why Wynwood

Wynwood was a garment district long before it was an art district: Jewish New Yorkers opened clothing factories there in the 1920s. Since the Wynwood Walls opened in 2009 the area has been known for murals, galleries and shops, and it still has a formally named Wynwood Fashion District. A fashion store with a political point of view fit the neighborhood's history.

What happened next

In 2018 Zembra told Fashionista she planned stores in New York, California and Austin. We found no report that any of them opened. Time Out's venue listing now reads "Antidote Store (CLOSED)", and Google Maps marks the address as permanently closed. The antidotestore.us domain lapsed, and this site is an independent record written afterwards (see About).