It was a cloudy mid-September Tuesday in New York City, the type when Mother Nature can’t make up her mind whether she wants to rain or not. Still, there was enough color in the back room of Cafe Zaffri to stave off the gloom. There, Ashley Moubayed was hosting her first official New York Fashion Week event for her jewelry brand, Don’t Let Disco. Half a presentation of Moubayed’s spring 2026 collection, half a pop-up beading bar for guests to create their own token.

Seven or so models—a few were members of the 2021-launched brand's small team—wore layered beaded necklaces and tasseled stands from the new collection. Editors, buyers, and voices of the fashion commentariat (I recognized at least four Substack authors I follow) sat at white-tablecloth tables stringing vintage beads, rock crystals, and pearls onto cords. One woman brought her black cat, Pi, with a turquoise Don't Let Disco charm clipped to its collar. The entire event felt like a convention of cool girls just as much as it did a tactile exercise to satisfy your inner child.

The goal of the afternoon was connection: between the guests, when they asked their neighbor for advice on which bead to place next, and between attendees and the jewelry they made. “I like the idea of the customer being involved in the process,” Moubayed, 36, told me on a video call two weeks before her formal NYFW debut. “That's missing from luxury now—people just want something for the face of it or the status that it comes with. But luxury is more than that; it should really be an entire world you’re an active participant in."

In the world of Don’t Let Disco, there's one key tenet to know: a bead is more than just a bauble. “My mission is to elevate the humble bead into the realm of fine jewelry—to get people to understand the stories behind each bead, and to realize that there is a richness and a luxury in these stories,” says Moubayed.

The Bed Stuy, Brooklyn-based designer uses found and secondhand materials, either purchased at auction, bought from antiques dealers, or deconstructed from jewelry deemed unfit for sale and donated by The RealReal. “There are so many incredible, beautiful things that already exist in this world. We don't let them go.” (Say that slower: Don’t let them go. Don’t Let Disco. Hear it?) “Instead, we reimagine them.”

With some gentle TLC and a bath in dish soap, rare African resin beads from the turn of the century, covered in rusty patina, can glisten like red cherries. Sea glass, coral, and shells become the Bounty of the Bine choker. A vintage Pucci silk scarf can be taken apart and turned into a cord necklace for a pendant.

Moubayed has loved vintage jewelry since she was a young girl growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. Her mom, coincidentally named Jewel, took her daughter to comb through antique stores and estate sales. In high school, when thrifting became a new fun activity for teenage millennials, Moubayed would deep dive into the costume jewelry bins at Salvation Army. She got her first taste for entrepreneurship at Spelman College, where the budding designer sold the jewelry she made in between marketing and account management classes at the school's weekly pop-up market.

After graduating, and following a stint at Ogilvy, Moubayed joined Sotheby's as the marketing director. "As a textbook Libra who loves rare objects and extraordinary art, it was like being a kid in a candy shop," she says. At the fine art auction house, she honed her eye as an aesthete even more. Passing by the works from Renaissance Masters on your walk to the conference room every day makes it natural to want only to surround yourself with the finer things.

Moubayed began beading again and gifted her Sotheby’s “work wife” a bracelet. A month later, the same co-worker commissioned 25 custom beaded bracelets for a bachelorette trip to Turks and Caicos. More of Moubayed’s friends wanted their own designs, and she started selling her work at small NYC craft markets and on a website she ran solo.

But, as many entrepreneurs know, the early days of brand building are costly. Moubayed was still at her Sotheby’s nine-to-five and could only bead after work and in the wee hours of the morning. Exhausted, she asked the universe for a sign and found it on a phone call with her grandmother. She launched Don’t Let Disco full-time in May 2021. Cut to now, and she’s a 2025 CFDA Fashion Fund finalist and presenting her work on the last day of NYFW.

There’s “more magic than logic” to Moubayed’s design process. “The beads kind of tell me where they want to go; I know that sounds silly, but I talk to them over time,” says the designer. There’s a dialogue in every Don’t Let Disco piece; between the textures and materials— “the ancient stillness of jade next to the cool, vibrant energy of coral”—or its backstory—“ceramic beads from a ‘60s necklace with futuristic rock crystals that are Fulani protection amulets I bought from my African antiques dealer.”

At the brand’s signature pop-up beading bars, like the one from its NYFW debut, customers are invited to create their own combinations. "[The beading bars are] about educating the buyer to appreciate the craft, become a steward of the brand, and understand the labor that goes into these pieces and why they’re paying $1,100 for a beaded necklace,” says Moubayed, who’s also currently studying colored stones and diamonds at the Gemological Institute of America.

Greater community building is on the docket for Don't Let Disco in the months to come. Moubayed is launching a loyalty program for the brand's top thirty buyers, earning them early shopping access and special rates on the beading bars ($295 is the standard price for a ticket). She also plans to roll out a "reimagining option," where clients can bring their existing pieces into Don't Let Disco's soon-to-open Dumbo showroom, and artists will add new beads and rework existing ones.

More broadly, she hopes the appeal of making the old new again, ad infinitum, catches on with the mainstream. “I hope people see the luxury and elevation in turning storied, discarded treasures into something new and different that you can have for a long time,” Moubayed says. “That's the really wonderful part of jewelry and beading: It’s a constant cycle of beauty and things can constantly be reimagined.”

So much pontificating has been done about the relatively simple question of what women want to wear.

For Ashlynn Park, the fashion designer behind the acclaimed womenswear brand Ashlyn (her first name; drop the second 'n'), the answer is intuitive: Women want high-quality clothes that complement, not complicate, their lives. "I'm 42 years old and have a little more experience than young designers," the South Korean-born designer tells me on a video call. "I know what women want to wear because I know what I want to wear."

She understands the need for a smart blazer to wear to work and a cute and cheeky top to wear after hours. She appreciates the accentuating curve of an hourglass shape like Christian Dior did with his 'New Look' Bar jackets. She can navigate the tightrope balance of aspirational clothing that's not intimidating—for example, the baggy black leather trousers that opened her Fall 2025 show at New York Fashion Week, which were devilishly cool but classic enough to wear without looking like a try-hard. I, along with my fellow overworked, overtired, and underfed fashion week guests in the room, exhaled. We were in good hands for the following 20-something looks: here with a master craftswoman at work.

It's not always that you leave a fashion show feeling satisfied. But when you do, it's an insatiable hit that leaves you hankering for more. "Once women get their hands on an Ashlyn piece, they cannot go to the other brands," says Park.

The designer, who cut her teeth as a pattern-maker under Yohji Yamamoto for the Japanese designer's collaborative line with Adidas, Y-3, has a fastidious eye for precision. "I've always been a very quiet kind of designer who's really more focused on the technical side of clothing," she says. Park spent over two years developing her brand's first-ever Spring 2021 collection, comprised of meticulously made blazers and bustle-back dresses. One ink-black, draped gown from her Spring 2025 edit took Park a month and a half to make—she had to sculpt the jersey just right.

"I've always loved math and physics, and making beautiful shapes from scratch is the same idea," says Park, who initially studied architecture before pivoting to a master's in fashion design from Tokyo's Bunka Fashion College. "It's about understanding the balance of all the forces—the gravity, the tension, the fabric, the material."

The more geometrically challenging a design, the more pleased Park is. Inspired by the late great Issey Miyake, Park creates clothing from single squares of fabric without waste or scraps—a complex blend of craft and sustainability that thoroughly summarizes Ashlyn's ethos. Look to Park's Dillan dress, a white shirt dress cut from a single piece of fabric in a zero-waste process. It can be worn short or long-sleeved and was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021 for its permanent collection.

Equally as impressive as her technical know-how is her commercial sense, which she credits to watching her entrepreneur father run a business during her adolescence. Her eponymous brand has an impressive 65-to-90 percent sell rate at retailer partners like Bergdorf Goodman and a fervent cult following among New York City artists who revere her for her quiet luxury sensibility. "These clients can't wear anything logo-driven from Louis Vuitton or Chanel because it'll distract from their art. So, they come to me and find curated Ashlyn pieces," says Park, who also spent stints at Alexander Wang, Nili Lotan, and then at Calvin Klein under Raf Simons.

Ashyn's story is the classic tale of the tortoise and the hare. As other wunderkind brands have had their flash-in-the-pan moments and then petered out, perhaps unable to sustain long-lasting commercial success or crumbling under the impossible pressure of being the next big It thing, Park's been quietly at work building a small but mighty brand with craft at its core.

As a result of her slow-but-steady approach, Park has carved out an impressive archive of Ashyln-only silhouettes. "As a fun project for my interns and team, I made them compete by chopping up rectangular pieces of fabric randomly and reassembling them without waste into new, interesting, and three-dimensional shapes. I call it the Puzzle Project," she says. The result is sculptural and organic garments, often buoyantly draped and surreal-feeling—like the bright red spaghetti-strap top that bubbled over free-flowing pleated jersey pants that closed out Ashlyn's Fall 2025 show.

Above all, the Puzzle project is a technique that Park can own. "I realized only using square shapes is very similar to the processes of Yohji (Yamamoto), Issey (Miyake), and Comme des Garçons, and I cannot be another unique designer if I only work with squares," she says. "I live in the Western world, but I'm bringing Eastern culture here. These puzzles are how I mix those cultures," Park says.

Park's Puzzle Project is also her way of passing the baton, taking it from the institutional legends she learned from and handing it off to the next generation. "Often, when we [alumni] Yohji, CDG, and Margiela people meet, we joke about how we graduated from [a whole other] school after going to [traditional] design school and working for them. These designers all care about having a foundation in product-making, and craftsmanship is everything because, without that knowledge, we cannot build new things at all," she says. "I want people who work at my brand to have the same education in craft. I want them to say, 'Oh, we graduated from the Ashlyn school.'"

As Yommamto taught her, Park wants her team to understand design in an abstract, creative sense, but chiefly in clothing construction. "Yohji would ask, 'Why did you put five pockets on the piece? Why did you choose the long sleeve? Which history inspired you?' If you couldn't come up with a good reason or didn't know an era and its design details, he would scold you," she says.

The illustrious Yommamto taught Park to be an uncompromising perfectionist, a methodology she's now implementing while forging her own path. "My standards are quite high. I start with the first idea and then refine and refine it until I feel satisfied; only then can I make it into a commercial piece," she says. I have to feel the energy that I want to express in the world."

That force field was palpable at the Fall 2025 show. Watching Park's knit peplum blazers and slinky tops that plunge just above the breastbone, I felt it in the air: she was on the precipice of taking Ashlyn to the next level. But unlike Yammamto and Miyake, Park has the acuity for womenswear that only comes from when a female fashion designer sits at the helm.

It's always special watching a superstar of craft at work. But it's all the more divine when someone like Park embodies womenswear in a way that men never can.

Shop a Selection of Ashlyn

Most independent designers present their first runway shows in college classrooms or budget-friendly gallery spaces rented by the hour. Torishéju Dumi held hers in a golden ballroom at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel at Paris Fashion Week last October. Naomi Campbell opened, Paloma Elsesser closed, and Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, one of the most in-demand fashion editors and collaborators in the industry, styled the Spring 2024 ready-to-wear collection for Dumi’s namesake brand.

One year later, Dumi still can’t quite believe her first-ever runway show wasn’t a dream. "I haven’t been able to take in how completely ludicrous and sheerly insane everything was,” she says, taking the call from a couch in her Hackney, London flat. “When I think about [the Spring 2024 show], it just seems like a made-up story or some strange event I imagined.”

The Nigerian-Brazilian designer based in London recalls those in the room—merchandising buyers, fashion editors, and industry scouts hunting for the next design wunderkind—were equally as stupefied, particularly when the '90s Big Six supermodel powerwalked out. "I don't think people realized it was [Campbell] at first, but then everybody instantly turned their heads and did a double-take. It was quite funny," she says with a chuckle.

A menswear graduate from the London College of Fashion with a master's degree from Central Saint Martins, Dumi's Spring 2024 collection—a tight edit of 21 looks titled “Fire on the Mountain”—was her declaration of “Hello, here I am!” to the world. The silhouettes were novel and slightly, intentionally, unsettling. Inspired by the traditional Nigerian lappa worn by her mother's Itsekiri tribe and surrealist David Lynch films, she swaddled foam hoops with black, charcoal, and cherry red cotton. She arranged them to look like serpents slithering across the body. Elsesser wore a halter top with thick tubes tangled around the neck and a skirt made of twisted fabric bunches—as if the model had just awoken and walked out in her thrashed bedsheets.

Even Dumi’s more understated tailoring felt precise with slightly avant-garde undertones, a delicate balance she learned when interning at Ann Demeulemeester and under Phoebe Philo at Celine in the 2010s. Campbell’s opening look was a testament to Dumi's multi-pronged skillset: smart, slouchy trousers, starched black shirting, and a black wool blazer with shoulder pads—but distorted into protruding horns.

The designer’s Spring 2024 collection was widely recognized as a triumph. British Vogue called Dumi “the wildcard who won Paris Fashion Week” and put her on its January 2024 cover. The Metropolitan Museum of Art asked to acquire seven of Dumi’s original pieces for its permanent collection—two of which were included in the 2024 Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition.

And then Law Roach called: the image architect and celebrity stylist wanted to put Zendaya in look seven from Dumi’s Spring 2024 collection—a wrapped, sculptural crop top and skirt with hoops on the hip and slices of fabric trailing to the floor—for a Dune: Part Two red carpet. “It couldn't have been anybody else but Z to wear that look,” Dumi says. “It’s funny because when making the pieces, I thought, ‘This is going to be for a warrior princess.’ [The look] has a sexiness to it—a bad-bad core element—but there’s an elegance that draws it all together. And that’s Zendaya.”

All of this whirlwind buzz for a baby brand that, on a human's timeline, would only just have started walking and talking—it's enough attention to make any designer on the rise feel overwhelmed by the expedited process.

But Dumi is decidedly unfazed. She practically scoffs at whether the stress of success could dictate her process; “No one is going to make me feel pressured to create. Like, what? You can't pressure art; I create when I want and when I feel like it," she says. “Many artists nowadays feel pressure to work harder, usually from social media, but my mother didn't bring me up that way. Everybody has their one life to live, so why would you stretch yourself thin like that? Why live a life in misery?”

Besides, Dumi has gotten quite adept at trusting the journey life takes her on. Growing up in Northwest London, she moved “further and further out into the -shires”—countryside counties such as Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire—after her father's death when she was 14. Upon graduating high school, she spent time in New York City interning at Philip Lim and juggling side gigs of babysitting and running errands for a lawyer family friend. “Even now, when I tell those stories to people,” she says, “I can't believe I did these things like that. Taking notes [for a lawyer] at the New York Supreme Court and running around filing motions—how strange is that?”

Her relationship with Karefa-Johnson also resulted from a funny twist of fate. In 2021, while finishing a master’s degree in fashion design at CSM, Dumi entered the college's L'Oréal Professionnel Award competition for up-and-coming talent. The designer didn’t win; “Apparently, I did everything wrong. They said I lost because I didn't upload my images as I should have. I just did things my way and how I thought things looked better.” But Karefa-Johnson, who served as a judge that year, was thoroughly impressed.

“Gabriela messaged me on Instagram, saying, ‘You didn't get the prize, but I really like your work and think you should do a show. If you ever need anything, let me know because I want support you in any way possible.’” Fast forward a few years, and Johnson made good on her promise, calling in a few favors to secure Dumi’s slot at Paris Fashion Week for the Spring 2024 season and Campbell and Elsesser’s participation.

Supermodel support, a Zendaya co-sign, and a leg-up from Johnson helped Dumi make a splash, but the biggest takeaway from her first-ever fashion show and the hullabaloo that followed is her forceful, undeniable talent. Dumi treats her fabric as any artist would, with reverence and excitement at what hasn’t yet been created. “When I'm working, I tend to sculpt things on a body or a mannequin as if I’m painting, almost using my hands as the paintbrush,” she says. “I like manipulating natural shapes to make them a bit uncanny. I want to make odd clothing that makes you feel like, “What? I don’t understand it, but wow, I like that sensation.’”

Dumi will present her next Spring 2025 runway show on October 1 during the Paris Fashion Week season. It's anxiety-inducing, and the designer is, as expected, a bit apprehensive. But Dumi also enjoys living in that little bubble of fear that comes from unveiling "La Nef de Fous," a collection that's been a year in the making and explores themes about the fragility and fragility of human earthly existence. She relates it to the addicting adrenaline spike from seeing a slasher film. "I don't know why, but watching a scary movie or a thriller makes me happy. I love things that scare me." Dumi's second-ever runway show is just another rush for her and the fashion set alike.

It’s the day after Saint Patrick’s Day when Róisín Pierce dials in for her call with Marie Claire. The Irish designer spent the holiday hiking Dublin's Wicklow Mountains with her mother Angie, whom she lovingly refers to by her first name. "We saw really small lambs, so that was quite nice," Pierce says with a laugh.

The artist behind her self-titled brand is tuning in from the crowded kitchen table of her Dublin family home. Pierce, framed by bolts of frothy white fabric and mannequins wearing her clothing samples, explains that the room doubles as her workspace. “It's quite a strange thing to do because in your personal time—if you even have that—you can't switch off because you see all the work you could be doing. [My pieces] live here, and I see them every day," says the designer, a Chanel 2019 Métiers d’Art prizewinner and a 2022 LVMH Prize finalist who received both honors before debuting her self-titled brand at Paris Fashion Week in March 2023.

Fortunately, pieces as pretty as Pierce's seamlessly double as decor: ruched white satin-crepe dresses that look like dollops of whipped cream, blouses surrounded by buoyant ribbons of lace, and communion veils in feather-light organza. The designer, whose brand is carried in the concept shop-meets-luxury department store Dover Street Market, is known for her gossamer gowns and intricate tops adorned with various Irish handicrafts—crochet, embroidery, and smocking.

In discussing her brand's origins, Pierce rewinds to her childhood. “I was definitely an odder, different kind of child. I'm dyslexic, so I wasn't ever really that interested in school. I was fascinated with little details in nature or objects and liked to be on my own and to create.” While other kids growing up in the early aughts pleaded for dolls and Tamagotchis, Pierce was enamored by clouds and wanted to draw and make things with her hands. “That's what I really enjoyed. I still am quite like that today,” says the 30-year-old designer.

Pierce pursued her passion for creating with her hands at Dublin National College of Art and Design and developed a fabric-forward design process that others might label as rogue. She doesn’t sketch or create her pieces with any semblance of a plan—“I often don’t know where the pieces are going to go"—but rather takes leads from her textiles just as a rogue chef cooking without a recipe would follow flavor.

Considering her brand’s zero-waste production model, it’s risky to freestyle, but Pierce finds creating with "strips and squares" under such limiting constraints an adrenaline rush. “It's very organic, and I find that very exciting and beautiful," she explains. Adding her unconventional approach to design and an unknown outcome is also quite addictive.

While Pierce is the brand's name and face, her business is not a one-woman show. “Angie works with me on all fronts of the brand—the crochet, the fabric decisions, the textile manipulation,” the designer explains. Pierce sings her mom's praises as a skilled craftswoman and recalls her “always making really magnificent things, like little crochet cardigans” throughout her childhood. "[Angie] knows what I'm after," she adds, referring to her mother as somewhat of an extension of herself.

It seems skilled craftsmanship is genetic in the Pierce family—as is innovation. The designer, who studied applied materials and fabric manipulation at Dublin's NCAD, describes her clothing as "three-dimensional soft sculptures." She merges traditional Irish craft techniques—lace and smocking, crochet and patchwork—for an intricate end result that demands closer inspection. "If the piece doesn’t have embroidery overlay, there are floating organza pedals. Then within that are these delicate floral sculptures—you look closer and see little vines of embroidery," says Pierce, who produces collections annually to "respect the type of work" she does.

In blending traditional craftsmanship with a modern point of view, Pierce's pieces feel both familiar and futuristic. "Our use of craft is not completely heritage; we fuse the contemporary with the traditional to push things beyond how they've been utilized before and to touch the unknown," says the designer. "We want to create things unlike anything you've seen before."

Adding to her brand's novelty is its all-white color palette. It's a choice that symbolizes "femininity and Irish craft" but also serves as a design facet that highlights her handiwork. "White becomes our color. We overlayer [fabrics] to create transparencies, track lace, and play with print work through the stitching. It's all these highly ornate, fully sculptural delicacies and intricacies that you can see, even in the white," says Pierce.

The designer deviated from her white color scheme only once—a single indigo dress from Fall 2024 referencing the dove Purgatorio from Dante’s Paradiso, who "dived through these dark waters, swooshing through all this inky blue." The sole blue look was a statement to the industry (“We are not a bridal brand," Pierce asserts) and also a wink at what's to come. "I've made my point in all the white that we've used. As much as I love it from a visual point, it's time for something new in the color zone," she hints.

While her work is sweet and innocent in its aesthetics, Pierce juxtaposes its appearance against the darker historical truths of Irish craftsmanship. Her 2019 debut collection, 'Mná i Bhláth (Women in Bloom), tells the story of the 18th-century Magdalene Laundries, where women who had children out of wedlock were held captive in religious institutions and forced to create needlepoint as carceral punishment.

“The history of [Irish craft] can be very dark, but we transport it to moments of light”—seen in her flouncy floral rosettes, ornate embellishments, and soft ruffles from her first collection five years ago. “In doing that, it lets the craft live on and have its own breathing space so that these dark subjects are not just disturbing,” she explains. “Then, when you peel back and reveal all these layers to my work—not just the decorative layers, but the personal and political layers—it has something to say.”

Here, Pierce specifically mentions Irish lace-making, a form of crochet invented during the Great Famine when women mimicked the look of highly desirable Italian lace by using a new form of hook. “The rule back then was that if you were fortunate enough to survive [the famine] and learn lace-making, you'd have to teach two other people. That was how [Irish lace-making] grew,” she explains. Many, Pierce included, credit these women for saving Ireland's economy and for preserving the country's individualistic form of handiwork.

In looking at her nation's past, the Irish iconoclast finds inspiration for her brand’s present. “I was a bit concerned by the lack of preservation for [Irish crochet] and that the people practicing the skill were often of a much older generation. So for 'Beware, Beware' [Róisín Pierce’s Fall 2023], we worked with some local Irish girls to learn lace work with Angie in the family home every Sunday.” When working on the capsule, Pierce, Angie, and the two young women sat at that very same crowded kitchen table and crocheted together every weekend.

Pierce is careful not to pigeonhole her brand as purely political. Instead, the designer invites paradoxes—“blurry lines of whether the craft is oppressive, liberating, or just expression”—that might get you thinking.

But she also doesn’t mind if you’re drawn to her clothing for how it looks, just as long as it makes you feel something. “What's quite important to us is that they're not just these highly feminine pieces; They can look quite strong and protective, like armor, and people can sense that rawness when wearing them. To give women that strength, to show them new feminine thought, is a beautiful thing.”

Meet The Vanguards, Marie Claire's fashion franchise spotlighting the names to know. Here, the thought-leading designers, both emerging and veteran, provide a peek inside their process.

Meet The Vanguards, Marie Claire's fashion franchise spotlighting the names to know. Here, the thought-leading designers, both emerging and veteran, provide a peek inside their process.

You'd expect a knitwear designer to prioritize coziness, but with Charlotte Björklund, it's more of an innate mission. "I think it's my Viking side, my Swedish side—I want to keep people warm," the founder of Linnea Lund shares on a video call. "Our sweaters keep you warm in a more healing way, too, because they're made with love." The Swede cannot suppress the smile that instinctually spreads across her face with that last sentence.

Her sweater brand, Linnea Lund, sells what Björklund calls "conscious" cashmere. She's aware that word might cause trepidation—the designer, who studied fashion at ESMOD in Paris, is also weary of vague buzzwords. "There's a lot of knitwear brands today with eco-labels, and it's very confusing about what's conscious, what's not. What's the difference between a good cashmere sweater and a bad one? Is it the price? The tag?" asks the former Céline retail consultant, tuning in from her brand's headquarters in Paris.

Björklund launched Linnea Lund—her middle name combined with a Swedish word for community and family—in September 2019 to cut through the clutter: "conscious," in the context of her brand, means ethically-produced cashmere made to order. "The idea is a beautiful cashmere line that's trendless, seasonless, unisex, made in Italy, and with 100-percent traceability." (She explains that traceability means they can track when the wool was sourced, not which goat it came from—but that is on her list of goals for the near future.)

Björklund, who grew up between Sweden, France, Italy, and the U.S., wants her label to be a melting pot of cultural values—specifically “a mix of Swedish kindness, Italian craftsmanship, and French elegance. It’s important,” the 34-year-old says, with that same smile making an appearance again, “for Linnea Lund to represent the people of the world. I want to dress everybody.” Her universality lends itself to classic, evergreen designs: Fair Isle sweaters, cable-knit crewnecks, Breton-striped shirts, and ribbed cardigans that are roomy but won’t swallow you whole.

Björklund, who previously worked at a trend forecasting company, couldn’t care less about the traditional industry calendar. You can turn to other brands if you’re looking for a sweater that cashes in on the latest fad. "We don't have a new collection every six months. We develop iconics for men and women, pieces you're going to play with all year long and that you'll enjoy having in your wardrobe."

She'd rather focus on the quality of her cashmere. “My father is a chef, so I grew up understanding the importance of well-crafted, local, and seasonal products. When you have well-made products that have been nurtured and cultivated with love, there's not much you need to add to make it even more beautiful. That's what we do with Linnea Lund: we always try to support the yarn as much as possible—embellishing the raw material, not transforming it. We want it to be as it is.”

Logistical production processes aren’t always the most stimulating to discuss, but Björklund narrates hers like a riveting relay race.

Linnea Lund’s wool is sourced in Mongolia by shepherds who hand-comb the goats. Each animal provides up to eight ounces of raw fiber, but it’s a slow, tedious process. For instance, Linnea Lund’s casa blanket requires approximately four years of harvests on a single goat. But it is essential, Björklund says, to ensure the well-being of both the workers and animals. 

The hair is then brought from Mongolia to a small yarn factory in Italy’s Le Marche region, where it’s turned into a useable textile. Next stop: a family-owned factory in Fano, only ten kilometers from the spinning mill. “It's very important to be as low as possible in terms of carbon impact, too," Björklund notes. There, the sweaters are made by Marco, Björklund’s manufacturer, to whom she exclusively refers by name. “He's worked in his family’s knitting mill since he was 15. I think it’s very important to give the makers of our clothes visibility and put them as much as possible in the spotlight," she tells me.

The shopping process is equally as intriguing as the production. "What happens is that you can either go into a Linnea Lund store"—the brand has two: one in Stockholm, one in Pairs, which Björklund just opened in time for Paris Fashion Week—"find your happiness with a piece in stock, and buy it there. Otherwise, you select a sweater in the color of your choice from our palette of 20 to 30 colors, and it'll be made for you in Italy within two to three weeks."

During her video call, Björklund pulls out a booklet of color options to showcase Linnea Lund's current options. "The colors depend on the week because we only work with existing and overproduced yarn," she explains. The designer gestures to a bright red—the same shade as the cherry-colored cardigan she's wearing—a bright sunset orange, a pebble gray blended with white, beige, and a bit of yellow. "Our colors are very unique, but again, we're not the ones who decide the colors in the end. It's the customer."

Ultimately, Björklund says people are the core of her brand—forgoing the knitwear even. “The human aspect, for me, is very important,” she says and cites what her father, the chef, ingrained into her. “When you go into a nice restaurant and the chef comes out and explains, ‘Okay, so this bread has been baked for 12 hours,' or whatever, you have another level of respect for your meal." That’s what she strives to do with Linnea Lund's transparency. 

“I want people to understand what's behind every sweater, from the goats to yarn to the knitting. For them to understand that a sweater is not just made by clicking on a button and then printed: It's something knitted and made with love by people. If you order a sweater like this tomorrow”—again, gesturing to her ruby red cardigan—"it's going be made for you in Italy by Marco and his family.” With just that thought alone…you'll feel a bit warmer.

Meet The Vanguards, Marie Claire's fashion franchise spotlighting the names to know. Here, the thought-leading designers, both emerging and veteran, provide a peek inside their process.

Jack Miner of Interior enjoys the messy bits of life—or “screw-ups,” as he calls them (technically, he uses the supercharged, explicit version). The New York-based designer isn't interested in making clothes for people who pursue perfection. "It's not about putting on a front or a veneer; It's about authenticity and honesty, being vulnerable and exposed, more than anything else," he shares over a video call. Consider the brand’s Riley Coat, a deconstructed double-breasted style with frayed seams and open slashes on the shoulders and spine. It’s outerwear for someone who bares their mistakes with pride. "That's what's great about humanity: the flaw. We want to celebrate it," says Miner.

As of late, the designer's own life has been both a bit messy and unexpected, too. He's only “just coming out of the woods” from COVID when speaking with Maire Claire. On the upbeat, it was also when he found out that Interior was nominated for Fashion Trust U.S., a nonprofit organization supporting emerging US-based design talent.

The whirlwind continues: As of earlier this week, Miner and Lily Miesmer, his co-founder and best friend since middle school, have officially parted ways. “We've charted so much together. She’s been so integral to Interior since its inception in 2020. But Lily had some personal life changes and interests to pursue, part of which was relocating to Paris.” Together, the duo decided that Miesmer would exit her active role in the business but remain a silent partner.

That's the tree of life, right? Despite sprouting from the same trunk, branches are known to grow in their different directions. Still, it’s a lot. Here, he addresses the universe directly: “Just bring it on—we can handle it. What's another little thing, you know?” Not all designers whose lives were recently shaken like a snow globe would be as even-keeled a week out from showing their newest collection. But again, Miner flourishes in the chaos.

Interior has carved out a corner in womenswear that’s sophisticated and sensual but dark, perhaps even perverse. “The easiest way to distill what we do is that we take styles canon to American sportswear and subvert them. How do we eff this up? How do we make it interesting and create tension? The result is clothes that feel familiar but also interesting and fresh,” explains Miner, who worked at the cult menswear label Bode before starting Interior.

The brand's Fall/Winter 2024 collection, debuting this season on February 13, is quintessential of the brand’s M.O: The edit features plenty of power suits—which the designer dubs “big energy tailoring”—done in dashed and broken pinstripes; Cotton poplin distorted into something far beyond the button-downs hanging in your closet; A chiffon gown that unravels at the hem and a sharply-tailored overcoat with a mangy shearling collar.

His work might be wild, but Miner, who honed his business savvy working under venture capitalist Chris Burch (yes, as in Tory) and previously ran his own successful menswear line, Hecho, knows what he’s doing. “The end goal of the brand from a product perspective is to create a novel wardrobe for our woman across every touch point of her closet. It’s full wardrobing. Whether denim, knitwear, tailoring, or eveningwear, she can come to Interior and find us as the resource for her needs.” 

As a screenwriter would flesh out every detail of their characters, Miner intimately knows the Interior woman. “She revels in what makes her different. She's messy and human and likes that about herself. She’s not this shellacked social media image.” Her manicure is chipped, and you won’t see her carrying a $10,000 bag or wearing a gold status symbol bracelet. Miner believes she’s also annoyed with the current state of society—because he is, too. “Today, we see this drive toward assimilation and pervasive sameness. It’s an aesthetic flattening due to a social media-dominated world, where there's a monolithic understanding in the culture of what looks good. This is what the North Star is, and it's very one note.”

Interior serves as the antidote to all of that. “We want to give her the alternative option of wearing something that feels distinct, different, and more authentic to the reality of the human experience: what it means to be a person and have to get dressed and put clothes on every day.” What it means to put yourself together even on the days when you’re sick. Or processing that your best friend is moving halfway across the world. Or when your brand is growing, growing, growing, and about to start a whole new chapter at the same time.

It can be overwhelming, maybe even sad and scary, to get dressed on those days. But if you lean into the chaos, Interior has an outfit for you.