This season Lazoschmidl is showing in Paris by invitation, which is a big milestone for an independent label operating far from the madding crowd between Stockholm and Frankfurt. Copies of the brand’s designs and styling have become rife, showing that the label has been unofficially recognized by peers. As menswear becomes more overtly queer, fashion is finally catching up with the Lazoschmidl fun-loving and body-positive aesthetic, which, its designers stress, is for everybody.
“People need to be happy. What can we do to make people happy?” is one of the brand’s tenets, according to Lazo. “This is where we started from, that people have fun with fashion,” adds Schmidl. Their signature butterfly motif, available in new forms this season, including a clutch, speaks to the transformative aspect of the metier. Still, the mood this season is relatively tempered. “We decided with this collection to make it a little bit more dressed–for Lazoschmidl. There are more layers and less in-your-face color; it’s more thoughtful in a way,” explains Lazo. “It’s more pure,” says Schmidl, “but it also has a lot of glitz.” (See the “tinfoil” pants for example).
At first glance this collection might seem less directional than others the brand has shown, but given the pair’s track record for prescience, it might just be that they are among the few designing for the times we actually live in, rather than for an idealized world. Lazo lives blocks from an immigration center in Stockholm and can see firsthand the affects of politics on people; he also recently lost his grandmother. And it was a flower, the first flower received from her beloved, that was pressed between the pages of her Arabic prayer book, which traveled from Iraq to America and then to Sweden, that provided one of the main motifs of the season. The actual flower makes an appearance, but other blooms, like a rose embroidered on a sweatshirt, appear throughout.
If the signature graphic prints don’t have their usual pop, sheer and sparkly boiler suits offer a different kind of thrill. The wider pants nod to the pair’s starring inspiration, the girl bands and singers they loved as boys—Sugar Babes, Spice Girls, Britney… Into this mix comes the awkward and provocative length and lacing of three-quarter American football pants. This, Lazo explains, is a kind of glamorization of “the high school thing and sports, which we didn’t have”—and which form the backdrop for countless lyrics, videos, and films. In this time of great uncertainty and a changing world order, an arguably elegiac strain of Americana is pervasive. But this is Lazoschmidl, which means those pants are made for going out and having a ball in.
