Carlos Miele stood in the middle of what would be his new shop, a long space on the ground floor of Village of Merrick Park.
He looked around, and looked surprised.
The guts of the store -- wires, air conditioning vents, exposed beams -- spilled everywhere. It was a long way from neat rows of $2,000 silk dresses with Miele's signature circular rosettes, fuxico, as they're called in his native Brazilian Portuguese, hanging equidistant.
''They are taking forever,'' groaned Miele, who at 44 is boyishly handsome.
He stepped through the mess, talking to the store's licensee, Alexandre Berger.
''What's this?'' Miele said, pointing to a huge box.
''TV,'' Berger said.
''OK,'' Miele said. ``It's going to look really beautiful.''
He sounded tired and, over pasta a short while later, he said he was.
He had just rushed through Amsterdam, Paris, Rio, New York, and was now barreling through Miami, part of a dizzying push to open stores from Los Angeles to Dubai.
''I own the corporation 100 percent, but right now I'm looking for a partner who's going to help me to grow,'' said Miele, sitting beside his girlfriend, Renata Castro, a Brazilian model who resembles a young Linda Evangelista.
''I want to move fast,'' he said. ``Doing it the way Ralph Lauren did is good.''
Like Lauren, Miele wants to create a wide-ranging brand, one based on the flavor of Brazil. He thinks the world is ready for it.
'There's this whole concept of the `new Latins,' which is very good,'' Miele said.
``For a long time we wanted to look like Europeans. Now, suddenly, we have big self-esteem. We want to look like us. And now Europeans want to look like us.''
Blended influences in Brazil, especially those of Japanese and Lebanese descendants, Miele said, have resulted in a dynamic culture, music and aesthetic -- one he thinks is exportable.
''I want to have a perfume, furniture, accessories,'' Miele said. ``I think I'm going to be the Brazilian lifestyle everybody dreams about.''
Miele's store is set to open the first week in June, on the ground floor of Village of Merrick Park, next to Betsey Johnson.
