behind the music fashion with Serge Neborak from Drink.More.Water

I Enjoy Music, and I enjoy creative work surrounding music as well. So I knew at some point that I needed to get a blog interview with Serge Neborak on the books! Neborak is the mind behind the NYC brand Drink.More.Water, which is a clothing brand, an event series, an "art project," and most recently a brick and mortar store in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Manhattan. You gotta stay multidisciplinary to survive out here, no matter the number of bridges you find yourself between.

I met Serge, aka Young Warhol, outside the teeny sweaty bar where a We Take Manhattan party was taking place, but I'd already seen his splashy fashion designs all over instagram: zesty photo-negative graphics and cornea-melting neon, glistening atop silhouettes like dramatic jackets and daringly proportioned crop tops. Not fussy couture, and definitely not run-of-the-mill streetwear, but a secret third thing.

The aesthetic was a perfect match for the energy of the New York music scene (Blaketheman1000, whose song "Citibike" was recently name-checked by NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in a Pitchfork feature, wore a Drink.More.Water suit onstage in 2023) and the brand has expanded along with it, with artists like Model/Actriz, Shallowhalo, and Marisa Dabice from Mannequin Pussy all sporting DMW pieces at performances and in editorial photo shoots.

Neborak's fashion work overlaps with the music world in other ways—he's been throwing more events that feature musical performances, most recently a show with the delightful Ren G of Club Eat fame headlining. So it's high time I got this downtown polymath on the record, which happened in—get this—Los Angeles—via an interview at the bustling Grand Central Market location of Go Get Em Tiger...read on for thoughts on how to balance social media with IRL realness, secrets of styling success, and making clothing that makes you feel hot...

[Molly Mary O'Brien] Okay, so Drink.More.Water. Want to give me the basics of when you started the brand, why you started it?

[Serge Neborak] So I used to work in fashion. I didn't go to school for design, I went for art history. I thought I was was going to work in fashion on the business side, always had fashion internships in college, and then out of college, I got a job in fashion PR and fucking hated it.

PR is such a grind.

I was also making no money. It was a horrible schedule. Then I wanted to quit, get a bartending job and pursue being an actor. But I wanted to learn how to make clothes, so I learned to screen print, and that took over as my main focus. That was 2018, and I came up with the concept of Drink.More.Water. I always knew what I wanted to do with it, which was to tell these big stories, to have each season be a self-contained narrative. I wasn't good early on. The first season was very rudimentary, just me screen printing on suits. But the ideas were there.

I took a few classes at Parsons, and by season three I was doing more cut and sew stuff. Every year I would do a runway show, and working with artists was a natural part of it, because it's very showy, flashy clothing, stuff that works really well as costumes for artists. By 2022 I started getting more outside of my friend group and into the downtown indie music scene: Shallowhalo, Blaketheman1000, May Rio. Harrison was just starting the Dare back then. It was this wonderful explosion of a cultural scene. I was styling a lot of artists and reaching out to anyone I could who wanted to wear my stuff.

The music show I did, I think it was spring 2023? At Grotta Azzurra, an Italian restaurant downtown. It's good marketing for the brand because it gets more people in there. I've always said that Drink.More.Water is less of a clothing brand and more of a platform to do whatever. A lot of people found the brand through the shows and found out it was clothing after the fact. It's nothing if not an excuse to throw a good party.

And then last year we had the opportunity to open a store, which was really exciting. I always wanted a physical retail store. It was always going to be short-term, so we ended up doing it about five, six months. I definitely want to open a new store in a better location.

Had you had prior experience throwing events and doing production stuff?

I did a little bit in my job in PR. I worked at Fashion Week events. I was styling a lot of people, so I knew about live shows and how how they worked. Since the first runway show in 2019, it was a crash course in how to do events myself.

Are you managing everything yourself or do you get to delegate?

I've always had an issue delegating because DMW is so much my own project. If I do an event I'll be like, you run door, you run the bar...but even then, if anything goes wrong, I have to be the one to figure it out. I have a lot of friends that help out, but it's definitely been something I need to work on. And it's frustrating because I feel like I'm unable to give each aspect of the business enough time and energy it needs to. Like styling artists, that'll happen once every week or two, but I should be doing that three to five times a week.

And that's a whole job in and of itself.

That's something I need to work on. Everything I do, I've learned out to do it on the fly, and it gets a little bit bigger and better every year, whether it's live shows or the collection. And I take any opportunities as they come in, if the vibes seem good. We got hit up by this gallery The Locker Room to help throw an arts festival in the Rockaways. They wanted us to curate the music section. I was like, sure! I had a friend who wanted to do an experimental theater thing, using my clothes as costumes. I love working on weird projects like that.

So I knew about DMW from Instagram, probably through mutual friends. But then I met you at We Take Manhattan. Do you feel like in-person stuff is ultimately the way to get creative things flowing?

I think so. I have a weird relationship with social media where it's necessary, but we all kind of realize it's bullshit. I've had friends who have built entire careers on social media, but it's such a crapshoot. I've always found that the best way to share we're doing and make it stand out is to bring people into our world physically. That was why the store was so important to me. In-person experiences cut through the noise of social media, and they give people something to do. Word of mouth is slower, but it's a better way to build an organic community.

We don't have massive numbers per se, but all our followers are real. We don't have 80,000 followers, but the 4,000 that we do are real people that actually know who we are. I did this Fashion Week event a couple of years ago with a showroom, and they were doing a brand audit on us. They were criticizing our follower count, but they were like, "Your engagement is really good."

That's what matters!

So yeah, it's slower, it takes longer. But I think it's a way to build a more meaningful following.

Would love to hear more about your thoughts on music and fashion. Do you have any favorite music fashion folks? Or anyone that would be a dream client?

In high school and college, I was a huge hip hop fan, and that was around the time that rap really got into fashion, Kanye and ASAP Rocky and Virgil and whatnot. It was the perfect time to be a kid and into streetwear and hip hop, because it really converged right at that moment. For DMW, I always wanted to be maximalist, baroque. And that's a natural pairing for music. People want to look good onstage. The thing got us the most attention originally was the mirror suit that I put Blake years ago. It's just something that a normal person isn't going to wear.

I've gotten to work with a ton of friends who are musicians—Shallowhalo, Blog:Analog, Jean-Luc, Birthday Girl. In terms of people who I want to style, I'll work with anyone if the vibes are good.

I've never styled anyone. What's something about styling that people don't realize goes into it?

The person has to be really comfortable. You don't want to put someone in something that goes against their ethos. For music, it's not gonna be clothing you normally wear, but it should be something that still goes with your vibe overall. A lot of times you see people on red carpets or shoots, and it doesn't look like them at all. So maybe you step out of your comfort zone, but it still looks like you.

With Mannequin Pussy, it looked really natural, that sweater and the leather pants that she wore. It's important to not push someone on [an outfit]. If someone doesn't like something, don't force it on them. The whole idea of DMW is, you want to feel good. I've said this in past interviews before, it's clothing to feel hot in!

Last question. New York City. Greatest city in the world. What's over in New York and what's next in New York?

That's a good question. I do feel like the "indie sleaze," that specific style and genre revival...I feel like if I say this, people will be like it's been over for two years already! But that specific LCD Soundsystem, MGMT kind of revival thing is definitely on its way out. It became a catch-all for indie music in general. I think rock and roll in general has definitely had a revival in New York. Five, ten years ago, you did not really see that many people starting bands. I see that continuing for sure.

But also, genres in general are much less relevant than they used to be. I think people are doing whatever—it's exciting to not be pinned down to one lane. So, yeah, I think nostalgia is on its way out, but I don't see indie music going anywhere.

Thanks Serge! Follow his exploits on IG and as always, Drink More Water.

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