The centre of Miami's chic, for the last fifteen years, has been a forty-block stretch of the Design District and a few blocks of South Beach. That is over. The address that matters now is six miles south, on the financial-district peninsula that until recently nobody bothered to dine in — Brickell, and specifically the 830 Brickell tower.
The pivot is being driven, almost single-handedly, by Vlad Doronin's OKO Group, which built 830 Brickell — the city's first new Class A office tower in a decade — and then turned the top two floors into something other than offices. On 14 March, Seia opened on the fifty-fourth floor: a contemporary Italian restaurant in partnership with The Bastion Collection, the European group with ten Michelin stars in seven years. The room is anchored by an Andy Warhol Camouflage series in the dining room and a Damien Hirst above the bar. Above it, on the fifty-fifth floor, sits Seia Club — invitation-only, $25,000 initiation, a private floor designed by the same team that did the Aman New York members rooms.
The Seia Club is the move that matters. Until now, the Miami members' room has been a Design District proposition — ZZ's Club at the Faena, Casa Tua's Brickell townhouse on its small scale, the Soho Beach House on Collins. None of them sit at altitude, none of them sit above an office tower, and none of them are designed for the lawyer-banker-family-office population that now lives in Brickell full time. Seia Club is purpose-built for that client. That is the next twenty years of Miami social.
The supporting cast is filling in fast. The Mexican opened 9 April on Brickell Key, in a 10,000-square-foot waterfront room designed by Paulina Morán — the Dallas original was named one of the World's Most Beautiful Restaurants by the Prix Versailles of UNESCO. Karyu, the Design District omakase, opened a Brickell extension in the spring, signalling a quiet spillover south. And the new Cipriani residences on Brickell Avenue come online in 2027 — the second Cipriani-branded address in the city, both south of the river.
The Design District is not over. It is, simply, no longer the only answer. The UHNW family that ten years ago bought into Star Island and ate in South Beach now buys into Brickell Key and Edition Residences, dines at the top of 830, and books the table because a hostess has remembered the number.
The geography of Miami chic has moved south. The membership floor is its proof.
— Camille Vedy
