Our Story
About the brand
On m'appelle le peintre des danseuses, on ne comprend pas que la danseuse a été pour moi un prétexte à peindre de jolies étoffes et à rendre des mouvements.
– Edgar Degas
(People call me the painter of dancers; one does not realize that the subject of the dancer is the perfect excuse for me to indulge in the sensory splendor of fabrics and the ephemeral beauty of movements.)
True to the words of the master, Xiaoxiao Designs is a celebration of textiles, brought to life by the dancers who embody them.
Intricate lace, sumptuous velvet, diaphanous mesh, buttery elastane, gossamer tulle — Xiaoxiao Designs has brought luxury into the utilitarian landscape of contemporary activewear. Our founder and designer, Xiaoxiao Cao, pioneered historicism and romanticism in this generation of fashion, a decade before the rest of the industry caught up. The sculptural construction and imaginative ornamentation of her creations unify elite athletic performance with an haute couture sensibility.
The history of art is at the core of Xiaoxiao Designs’ brand identity. The Maison’s color palette ranges from the splendid jewel-tones of Italian Renaissance to the sun-dappled pastels of French Impressionism. In a meeting of Rococo and Surrealism, you will find in our designs such motifs as bows, ruffles, blooms; trompe l’œil necklines, whimsical cut-outs, illusory boning, and performative corsetry.
Our designer continuously draws inspiration from the great heroines of history, art, literature, and film. Each style tells a story, and each color evokes an element from the narrative. From the studio to the street, the Xiaoxiao Designs heroine moves through the world as a singular work of art.
About the designer
A classically-trained ballerina with a modern entrepreneurial spirit, Xiaoxiao Cao is a singular figure in the contemporary world of dance and fashion.
At age ten, Xiaoxiao was admitted into the Guangzhou Ballet School, one of only four elite ballet academies in China with a direct lineage to the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. At age sixteen, she was invited to join Guangzhou Ballet, where she performed many soloist roles – most notably in La Sylphide, the first Romantic ballet. She was personally selected and rehearsed by the late great choreographer Pierre Lacotte for the première.
Xiaoxiao moved to New York at age 22. Before long, she launched her eponymous brand while performing with Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center. Inspired chiefly by the works of Edgar Degas, as well as the visual and material cultures of the nineteenth century, Xiaoxiao recreates La Belle Époque silhouettes in a strikingly modernist idiom. Her designs are imbued with the storied romance and drama of that era, which in turn bring elegance and glamour into the lives of contemporary women who inhabit them.
After her immersion in Neoclassicism, Xiaoxiao traveled back in time to the nineteenth century origin of ballet, as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera. It was perhaps this experience that helped her get into character for the role of a lifetime – a real-life Degas ballerina in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Xiaoxiao holds the distinction as first dancer from mainland China in Phantom’s near four-decade run. She was featured in Playbill in 2019 as one of the 20 members of the Asian diaspora currently in a Broadway ensemble.
In her Phantom tenure, Xiaoxiao truly became the nineteenth century dancer that Degas immortalized: dressed in costumes inspired by his paintings, and dancing with the mannerism of the Romantic era, this quotidian time-travel in turn inspired new designs for her line, which she proceeded to wear in classes and rehearsals – a Gesamtkunstwerk full-circle.
Xiaoxiao returned to the Metropolitan Opera House after Phantom concluded its historic run on Broadway. Her première was in the “Venusberg Ballet” from Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser. It was most fitting, as the maestro was the preeminent proponent of the “total work of art”, whose aesthetic ideals Xiaoxiao continues to embody in her work and life.
All the while, Xiaoxiao has been balancing a full-time performing schedule with growing Xiaoxiao Designs. Since its inception, the brand has found organic growth and gained a global following. The devotees of Xiaoxiao Designs include renowned ballerinas from the Mariinsky Theatre, Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and more, as well as professional dancers and students, or simply ballet-loving fashionistas around the world. The “Aphrodite” design was featured on the cover of Dance Magazine, modeled by prima ballerina Marianela Nuñez in its September issue of 2018.
Xiaoxiao Designs is a proud family affair. Xiaoxiao works closely with her parents, who serve as agents for clothing manufactures in China. As a result, her brand is exceptional in its unprecedented level of control and transparency in the manufacturing process, ensuring the best quality of production in an ethical environment. She is among the contemporary Chinese-American designers working to change the narrative surrounding the label of “Made in China”.
