First, the elephant in the room. Lily Miesmer, who co-funded Interior alongside Jack Miner in 2020, has departed the label. She will continue as a silent partner, with Miner running the ship. This fall 2024 lineup was his first doing so solo: “When you have a partner or someone that you’re very intimate with for a long time, in any capacity, the idea of breaking away from them feels scary,” said Miner at his presentation. “It feels like a leap of faith, but I know that I can do it.”
This collection, in more ways than one, saw Interior in a liminal space. There is the case of Miesmer’s departure, sure, but independent brands like this one are navigating treacherous waters. The anxiety—and curiosity—in New York this season over which brands are still healthy enough to keep on going was palpable. “We as an emerging brand are highly susceptible to any type of volatility,” said Miner, “so when the market has a tremor, larger brands and medium size to larger size brands are able to sustain that in a way that we are less able to.” But with every challenge comes opportunity, he said, explaining that Interior has had “wonderful support from stores” and that this has also pushed him to tend to his DTC vertical. As Miner spoke, two fashion directors at large scale retailers greeted him, and many editors and buyers at his presentation were wearing his clothes. So far, so good.
“We always envision our woman relative to Americana in one form or the other,” said Miner of his lineup. This season, he looked at New York City nightlife from the ’70s through the ’90s, considering hotspots like Studio 54, Tunnel, Palladium, and Limelight, and the cast of characters that inhabited them. What Miner argues is that these were “very democratic places where people’s visual personas were fostered to be authentic to themselves.” The gist of it is that now, in the age of TikTok and Instagram, what drives our culture is a “drive toward assimilation.” People’s measure of visual success is their neighbor or their favorite influencer, as is their barometer for style.
To celebrate this cult of the individual, Miner, somewhat paradoxically, narrowed down club culture of yore into a range of archetypes. The painter wore a just perfectly oversized double breasted corduroy suit; the musician a new dress iteration of the brand’s popular low-slung crewneck sweater (“it’s gone not viral, but baby viral?” said Miner). Miner’s off-duty ballerina and model wore a version of the same jacket, belted and elongated with an ’80s shoulder silhouette, here deftly rounded at the shoulder rather than the sleeve cap: it was the most covetable piece of the collection together with the dashed and broken pinstripe suit worn by the corporate yuppie. The socialite wore a navy jersey dress with cascading tangled chiffon unraveling into the ground, and the “’80s call girl” a prim black lace dress. Miner’s most compelling characters were those who evoked a sense of mystery and whose clothes balanced the delicate sensibility and pressing sense of angst signature to Interior: The washed out actress wore a beautifully bizarre billowing gold silk gown, the writer a slouchy suit with an overcoat with a shaggy shearling collar, and the club kid had gray jeans on with a funky lacey blouse underneath, its ruffled collar and sleeves cascading out of her jacket like an off-duty Pierrot clown after a bender.
“What we respond to emotionally is imperfection,” said Miner about his approach at Interior. The label has found a reputation for its compelling, perverse, and intentionally [insert expletive here] takes on a wardrobe classic. “The things that are wrong about us are the things that make us interesting and emotionally resonant,” said Miner. He’s right about that, and it’s a sentiment that he should continue to imprint into his clothes. How can a brand offer to outfit the nonconformist while still creating something everyone will want to buy? Miner is a deft designer with an eye for the technical, his ability to solve this riddle moving forward now will hinge on balancing his meticulous eye with his crave for imperfection.
