Alexia Ioannou Is Bringing Cheugy Back

Growing up in New Jersey, every square inch of Alexia Ioannou’s childhood bedroom was draped in animal print. “I had a leopard bedspread, leopard towels. My whole identity was Jersey leopard in the tackiest way ever,” the Nou Shoes designer says. Her mother, Dina Cantin (then Dina Manzo), was an inaugural star of Real Housewives of New Jersey, and Ioannou made frequent cameos in full bridge-and-tunnel glory. “I could cringe looking back at some of the aesthetic decisions I made: the long eyelashes, the tanning bed, the long French tips.”

But the 30-year-old — Zooming from her Los Angeles office in front of a mood board of neon snakeskin swatches, rosary beads, and vintage stiletto advertisements — has found a new appreciation for that Jersey girl. In fact, she’s the de facto muse behind the hot-selling, fashion-insider-approved shoe line, which counts Addison Rae among its loyal customers.

“Becoming a designer, I’ve tried to understand what are the foundational prints that I’ve always loved — the textures, the colors, the styles — but I’m making them less cheugy,” says Ioannou. Her new collection, which dropped two weeks ago, features leopard ponyhair mules with Christian Louboutain-esque red insoles. “I hate quiet luxury. I grew up in such a colorful environment where there was just so much print and color at once that now I’ve kind of learned to fine-tune it.”

Still, when it comes to her own shopping habits, Ioannou also had to rein in her maximalist approach. Her mom’s shoe collection was the stuff of RHONJ legend — a 2014 closet tour reveals Manzo Cantin’s color-coordinated hallway devoted entirely to her thousand-plus pairs — and Ioannou, an only child, absorbed the obsession early. “My mom does not share her collection with me, so I was 13 years old, working at the local boutique, spending my entire paycheck right back at the store,” she says. “I loved Marshalls, T.J.Maxx. I was hitting the mall nonstop. I was a shopaholic to the absolute max.”

While attending Fordham, which she graduated from in 2018, Ioannou got a different kind of education working at Barneys New York. (RIP.) “I was doing the grunt work, just running to the stockroom with these massive piles, but it was the best experience of my life.” Beyond orbiting high-end clients, stylists, and buyers, “I learned how to cater to people and what they were looking for,” she says. And nothing beats the memories of Barneys’ legendary employee-only sales: “I got my first pair of designer shoes, 70% off. They were classic Chanel slingbacks in black velvet. I’ve only worn them once because they feel like such a trophy.”

In the following years, Ioannou’s Instagram — where her 120,000 followers know her as @bohochicken — became hallowed ground for these types of holy grail finds. One post might show off her Pucci-printed thongs; the next, her Roberto Cavalli sandals with crystalized butterflies, or her coquettish pink Prada kitten heels. By 2021, Ioannou quit her job doing marketing for the denim brand MOTHER and devoted herself to starting her own jewelry brand. After a TikTok of her vintage Dior Galliano Dice heels blew up in 2022, she threw herself into sourcing and reselling vintage."“It’s so oversaturated now, but [at the time] there wasn’t anybody in my market only doing shoes and doing it really well,” she says. “So I’d go on The RealReal and buy these insane Manolos or Jimmy Choos for less than 200 bucks and turn them for twice the amount.” Demand got so high that she opened her own studio in Los Angeles, where Kylie Jenner, Anastasia Karanikolaou, and celebrity stylist Mimi Cuttrell would regularly shop. Ioannou closed the store after a year, but “it was stupid easy, honestly.”

“I hate quiet luxury. I grew up in such a colorful environment where there was just so much print and color at once that now I’ve kind of learned to fine-tune it.”

Vintage wasn’t just lucrative — it was also a therapeutic outlet amid the chaos of her family life. In 2012, Ioannou’s mother and stepfather (Tommy Manzo) separated. Three years later, Manzo hired and assisted a member of the Lucchese crime family to attack Dina’s now-husband, David Cantin. (Manzo was later sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the assault.) In a 2024 Substack post titled “Don’t Poke the Bear,” Ionannou described the “psychological warfare” Manzo enacted on her and her mother. (“He violently shook me awake on a sleepy winter morning, giving me just thirty minutes to ‘get the f*ck out,’” she wrote. “In that chaotic moment, I lost not only my home but also irreplaceable heirlooms collected over generations along with my childhood keepsakes.”)

“My mom would always point out these things that I didn’t even know she’d owned that I was sourcing,” Ioannou says now. “Once she said to me that it was so healing for her to watch me choose to take these things in and choose to let them go on my own terms. I never really thought about how much that [experience with my stepfather] traumatized me and how I could heal it through work.”

Though Nou only launched last year — and is still a small, independent label, run by just Ioannou and her boyfriend in Los Angeles and manufactured in Portugal — they’ve already been featured in Vogue’s September print issue and earned Ioannou a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. “Our shoes are made in very small quantities, and they most likely never come back. So, they’re just as collectible as a vintage piece,” she says. Her guiding ethos? “I’m my ultimate consumer.”

Well, her and Addison Rae. “She used to show up to my vintage studio in stilettos and booty shorts. She’s the heels girl,” Ioannou says. So when Rae’s stylist, Dara Allen, tapped Ioannou to create a custom pair of gold pumps for the pop star’s Tonight Show appearance, it felt like a natural fit. “I was like, ‘Wait, she's dancing her ass off in them!’ I had anxiety because I thought she was only wearing them for the interview,” she says. “She just brought them to life in a way that I couldn't even imagine.”