After vowing never to have a brand after co-founding the swimwear empire Triangl, Erin Deering couldn’t help but take a small passion project and turn it into what could be Melbourne’s next fashion darling.Deering is a unisex fashion brand that dropped this month with its 1.0 collection.And if that’s not enough, the entrepreneur is running for Deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne with a vision to ‘make council chic again’.Here, Deering gave Inside Retail the scoop on the categories that the brand is poised to play in. And if Brett Blundy’s reported plans to launch a new lingerie and sleepwear brand are anything to go by, one of those categories is about to become a lot more competitive.Inside Retail: It’s Deering day one. We’re here at Sydney’s Chinatown Country Club for the launch, and apparently, there’s quite a story behind Deering. What is it?Erin Deering: I vowed never to have a brand after Triangl, I didn’t want to do it. Then last year, I wrote a memoir.I toured that last year and did an interview with Patty Huntington from Harper’s Bazaar, where I spoke passionately about fashion and business.She asked if I was sure about not wanting to do fashion again, and I said, well, actually, you know, Patty, I’m thinking about doing something really small. At the time, Deering was tiny. It was me sampling things just to see. I had an idea to put out five to 10 pieces and see the response.I had not told anyone that before; she was the first person I told. Then Harper’s ran an article with the headline, ‘Triangl co-founder Erin Deering is launching a new fashion line.’IR: Typical journalist.ED: Yeah.And then I thought, OK, great, let’s do it. In fact, let’s do it properly. That was in September 2023 and in January 2024, I brought in my head of design, Jade [Day], and we just went hard and the collection is here now a year later in September 2024.IR: Wow, January this year that’s a really quick turnaround, is it not?ED: We pulled it together very quickly, and it happened easily.The brand is built around sets, styling and wearability with a bit of fun. So when you have that and you’re not taking yourself too seriously, it moves nice and easily. It was quite simple and seamless.IR: That’s a nice segue into the next question. Deering is unisex, it’s very fluid. I find a lot of denim I wear is men’s. How did you design a unisex jean?ED: My design ethos even before we were thinking about putting it on men is everything skims the body, and nothing is too fitted. Everything’s slightly masculine, tailored with a stronger silhouette.It happened when we started shooting on women and having fittings because we were doing the eyewear, which was unisex from the get-go. We had guys coming in to try it on and were putting Deering clothes on them just to try on and see.It looked so good on the guys and evolved very organically. I love and have always worn menswear, always. My husband steals all of my clothes because a lot of them are menswear.To be able to have that in my brand feels very authentic, and an extension of how I dress.We’ll see how it evolves. Unisex is great, but if we do want to push on the menswear, we’ll invest in hiring a menswear designer.IR: My colleague made me privy to something you said in a prior interview, which was that after exiting Triangl, if you were to start a business, you saw a lot of opportunity and grey space in the underwear category. Can we anticipate Deering underwear dropping soon?ED:  Yeah, we’re definitely thinking about it, and we’re looking at it.Nothing is set in stone, but I still believe the underwear category is a heavily under-resourced one.Skims obviously came in and dominated, but if you look at Skims, it’s still not got that fun [quality] to it.I think the underwear category presents an opportunity to be really fun, so watch this space. We are looking at some developments at the moment, and hopefully, we can bring some Deering underwear out.IR: Building on the category expansion topic, there were some sneak peeks in the Deering brand video. What’s next?ED: Yes there was.Eventually, we want to be a full, multi-category brand. At the moment, it’s eyewear and clothing.We did develop footwear, bags and belts — there’s nothing in production, we’re really just feeling that out.Originally, the thinking behind this was not to feature another brand’s product in our campaigns. Otherwise, you always draw the eye to it, and it takes away from the product you’re marketing. People always ask the question, ‘What are those shoes?’ And honestly, I didn’t want to be in the position to answer, that they’re Gucci, for example, and not Deering.In this campaign, it’s all Deering.IR: You’re a genius, so Deering does fashion from head to toe?ED: Thank you, I think footwear is another category where there’s a big gap for an Australian brand to have fun — to create beautifully made product that’s really well priced.We’ll keep tiptoeing into the space, when we put something out, it’ll be curated, beautiful and hopefully everyone will love it.