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This article first appeared on Vogue.
Every so often, a new brand comes around that charms a particular yet influential pocket of the industry. Such was the case with Interior, launched in 2021 by Jack Miner and Lily Miesmer. The duo’s brand of sophisticated weirdness seemed to fill a void in New York fashion, and they quickly found attention. Interior had the right kind of clout, a couple of hit products (at least within the insular bubble it existed in), and, it seemed, proper support. Today, though, Miner announced that Interior will be stopping all operations effective immediately. What happened?
“I did everything I could to fight against this,” said Miner over the phone on Friday. “No founder or designer wants to end up in the position I found myself in… it was just not the place I wanted to arrive.”
The last time Miner and I spoke, when he presented his autumn 2024 collection at a presentation during NYFW in February, Interior was undergoing some change. Miesmer had departed the brand, and Miner was charging forward by strengthening his direct-to-consumer business while tending to his existing relationships with stores. Interior was part of Net-a-Porter’s Vanguard programme and was sold at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks and more. Still, at the time, Miner also spoke of the precarious state of the industry for small independent businesses: “We as an emerging brand are highly susceptible to any type of volatility, 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,” he explained.
Miner felt hopeful coming off a productive autumn market. “We closed with $700,000 in booked revenue for the season, which was our strongest to date,” he said, a positive indication that things were trending in the right direction. “The North Star had been to reach a place to break even rather than operating on cash flow or being reliant on other sources of funding that may or may not be available to us.” Interior had no external partners or funding (“We did a very small friends and family round of fundraising that existed as debt, not equity, on the books, but I funded the vast majority of the business personally,” explained Miner). It had hit $2 million in revenue for 2023 with a break-even goal of $3 million for 2025. Distribution was growing, and the brand had picked up a few new accounts for autumn 2024. Miner’s goal seemed completely attainable.
Until it wasn’t. “It just speaks to the volatility of the industry and how quickly things can change,” he said. “We had just developed a beautiful pre-spring collection that will now never see the light of day.” The pivotal event was a line-up of business-as-usual touch-bases with Interior’s wholesale partners ahead of the June market, when he would have presented and sold the pre-collection. “All of those calls were really challenging, and, in spite of the positivity in recent months around the brand, almost every single partner had us planned either flat year-on-year or down year-on-year,” said Miner. Interior was nominated to the Fashion Trust US earlier this year, and had its eyes set on the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. But retail partners cited macro factors like economic instability and the upcoming election in addition to more specific hurdles like delays in fulfilling orders due to supply chain difficulties resulting in soft selling in certain categories. There was not much left for Miner to do. Those market tremors the designer cited last season had hit the brand, and time and money were running out.
“That was my ‘oh, shit’ moment,” said Miner. “Suddenly the goal of $3 million in 2025 that would have avoided significant cash shortfalls felt very difficult to get to.” His partners were planning him flat when he needed a 20 per cent growth to reach his goal. After a couple of calls with his accountant and outsourced CFO, he decided that it was time to call it. He explained: “I could have rolled the dice and really gambled to continue, but I don’t have the resources to make that money up, and I could not just enter this place that feels even more insecure.”
Every time a brand like Interior shuts down, insiders and onlookers seem to blame the industry itself, an intangible entity often seen as inhospitable and unsupportive. Did Miner feel like he had not gotten enough support? “This is a very nuanced conversation, and everyone’s experience is their own, but we had a tonne of support that I was always very grateful for,” the designer said. “We got as much as a brand like ours could have hoped to have gotten,” he added. “No one owed us anything, if anything, we owed everyone everything.”
Miner said that he felt that Interior needed to prove that it deserved to be there, “and I think we did, in so many ways”, he added. “It’s also what made the decision really difficult, to have so many people show up to support the brand, not just our employees but wholesalers, editors, celebrities and more, and to have to make this call was really difficult.”
The bottom line is that Interior had a fair shot, save the fact that it launched at the tail-end of the pandemic, a challenging time for the fashion business. “Maybe if it had launched at a different time…” pondered Miner, “maybe 10 years ago when there was more financial bandwidth with retailers, but now, if you haven’t figured it out as soon as you’re out the gate, it’s already too late.”
Now that Miner has had time to mull it over, he offers some reflection: “Not everyone has the privilege to stop.” Since launching Interior, the designer got married and became a father to his partner Alexis Bittar’s two children, in addition to a new baby girl born just over a year ago. “I had the luxury of knowing that I could stop and have his support,” said Miner, “I don’t know that a lot of people have that luxury and the real privilege to be able to make this call. Some designers find themselves in a place of not having options and needing to continue in spite of how dire the outlook is. I did not feel as backed into a corner as I could have felt.”
Miner has occupied many roles in the industry; as he put it, this wasn’t his first rodeo. From director of operations at Bode to an entrepreneur, designer and business owner, he’s been around long enough to not call this exit his final goodbye. For now, he said, his primary focus is to dedicate himself to his budding family. “I’m ready for my foremost identity to be ‘dad’.”
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