After catering to bridal customers for years through wholesale accounts like Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, Gustavo Cadile decided to open his own store. He celebrated the grand opening of Altar by Gustavo Cadile in Aventura Mall on Sept. 19 by walking down the aisle in the form of a fashion show and serving guests cake and Champagne. The occasion was a full-circle moment for the Argentine, who ran his business for 25 years in New York until the pandemic brought him back to where it all began.
“I worked at [Aventura Mall owner] Jackie Soffer’s boutiques Anika and Hughie and loved the international clientele and sales experience,” said Cadile of his student job while attending Miami International University of Art & Design. “I told her one day I will be back to open a store.”
He originally envisioned servicing clients who also relocated to South Florida during the pandemic in his Miami apartment until a 1,450-square-foot space occupied by an art gallery became available in the center. He decorated with a white palette, including the marble floors he inherited, and displays photographs of models wearing his latest looks on walls. The showstopper is a custom altar with uplighting, faux flowers in silk and delicate metal chain curtains.
The store carries bridal gowns and separates as well as other categories, from mother of the bride to formal eveningwear and cocktail dresses that are merchandised by color.
The great-grandson of a cotton magnate from Milan, and raised by a single mother in his native Argentina, Cadile’s very conscious of making women feel pampered. Bridal browsing is by appointment only. The store opened with 60 new bridal styles that retail from $2,000 to $14,000, with a few pricier designs, like a $22,500 tulle corset silhouette with geometric boning, a lace overlay and intricate beading, and 25 new ready-to-wear evening pieces that retail from $750 to $3,500. Rosettes, ostrich feathered cuffs, sequins in a camouflage pattern and his signature orchid hue, which also appears inside shopping bags, are represented in the current collection.
Cadile still manufactures in New York but operates from a showroom in downtown Miami through Mana Fashion, a property development and platform to transform the city into an industry hub. Growth is on his mind, too, with plans for knitwear produced in Italy and a capsule trousseau named for the Spanish translation of honeymoon, “luna de miel.”
