The Interior Collective

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with someone whose career trajectory is genuinely one of a kind in this industry.

Britany Simon grew up around construction, the daughter of a residential developer in Arizona. She earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in business and interior design, and spent years working in some of the top design firms in the state before landing her big break on HGTV. 

After gaining national recognition as a runner-up and fan favorite on Design Star, she went on to appear on multiple design-focused television programs, developing a strong media presence alongside deep technical expertise. In 2015, she launched Britany Simon Design House, which she has since grown into a highly respected boutique studio known for its elevated client experience, strong internal systems, and thoughtful approach to scaling a design business.

Today we are covering what those years on set taught her about delivering under pressure, and how those same instincts became the foundation for a client process that protects her time, her margins, and her relationships. We are going step by step, phase by phase, because a well-structured client experience is the difference between a busy studio and a profitable one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with Claire Staszak, founder and principal of Centered by Design, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Chicago specializing in the design and restoration of historic homes.

Claire came from journalism and marketing before she came to interiors, and that background has shaped everything about how she has built her firm, including how she thinks about showhouses. Most designers treat a showhouse as a client opportunity, but Claire treats it as a brand investment with a measurable return. She has done both local and national showhouses and built a team that helps make it all happen.

Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Domino, Luxe, and the Chicago Tribune. She has a studio and showroom in East Lakeview, a second design annex on the North Shore, a wallpaper collection with Isidore Leroy, and a debut book slated for Fall 2027.

Today we are getting into the real costs of a showhouse, the brand partnerships that make them financially viable, what local versus national showhouses actually produce for a studio, and what every designer should be thinking about before they say yes to the next one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Nicole Fisher, founder of Nicole Fisher Interiors, a residential design studio now based in New York City.

Before Nicole was designing homes, she was dressing Lady Gaga.She started her career in fashion, working as a stylist under Brandon Maxwell and Nicola Formichetti. That level of intentionality around detail, character, and originality didn't leave her when she transitioned into interior design. It became the entire foundation of how she works.

And that foundation has never been more relevant than right now. Because we are living through a moment in this industry where AI tools, algorithmic feeds, and the sheer volume of visual content being produced are creating a kind of aesthetic gravity — a pull toward the same. And the designers who are going to thrive in that environment are the ones who built something so specific and so genuinely theirs that no algorithm could have produced it.

Nicole is one of those designers. She's been named to Luxe's inaugural NEXT list, featured in Architectural Digest, and after ten-plus years of building her firm in Hudson, New York, she's moving her studio back to the city where her career began.

In this episode, we're talking about all of it. The fashion years, what that world taught her about building a visual identity, how she thinks about originality as a business strategy, and what designers need to understand about protecting their creative point of view in an era of algorithmic sameness. This is a conversation about creativity as a competitive advantage.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Trish Lynn, founder and principal designer of Colette Interiors, a full-service residential studio based in Chatham, New Jersey.

I want to ask you something before we get into this episode. When you picture your next hire, what do you picture? Someone fresh out of a design program? Someone who's already worked at another firm? Someone whose portfolio you can scroll through?

What if the best person for the job has never held a design title in their life?

Trish Lynn has built a six-person studio in one of the most competitive residential markets in the country — and she did it by hiring people with backgrounds in editorial, teaching, nursing, and finance alongside her design team. Before she launched Colette Interiors, she spent years in the corporate world, which meant she came to team-building with something most designers have to figure out entirely on their own: a real framework for what makes a person the right fit, and the confidence to look for it outside the obvious places.

In this episode, we're unpacking all of it. What those non-traditional backgrounds actually contribute to a design studio. How Trish hires for the qualities that don't show up in a portfolio. How she onboards someone into a creative process when they're coming from a completely different industry. And how she leads in a way that makes strong people want to stay.

If you've ever felt like you're hiring from a very small pool — or like every hire you've made has been a version of yourself — this conversation is going to open something up for you.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Hi, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm thrilled to welcome back one of the most business-savvy designers working right now — and one of the most generous guests we've ever had on this show.

If you were here for Zoë's first episode, you know she walked us through her six-step design process with a level of clarity and detail that genuinely stopped designers in their tracks. The questions kept coming, and honestly, so did mine. So when I started thinking about who I wanted back in Season 8, Zoë was at the top of my list.

Zoë Feldman is the founder of Zoë Feldman Design, a studio with offices in both Washington DC and New York City, specializing in high-end residential interiors with a signature approach. She's been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, and more — and beyond the press, she has spent years methodically building a studio that doesn't just produce beautiful work. It operates like a real business.

In this episode, we're talking about something that every designer hits at some point in their growth: how do you build a service structure that captures the right clients, at the right level, without compromising your brand or burning out your team? Zoë has done exactly that. She runs a full-service design offering for complex, high-investment projects. She recently launched Demi, a design-forward but operationally lighter service tier for clients who don't need full project management. And she's the most-booked designer on The Expert platform on the entire East Coast.

How she built all three of those things — how she prices them, positions them, staffs them, and protects the quality across all of them — is what we are getting into today. This one is going to be a masterclass.