This is Lazoschmidl’s 13th collection, and its second on the official Paris schedule, which is pretty monumental for an independent brand. Despite the designers’s distance from the four fashion capitals, and each other (Josef Lazo is based in Stockholm, Andreas Schmidl in Frankfurt, and both hold full-time jobs apart from their brand) they seem to have had an outsized influence on an industry that’s currently gung-ho about the queering of fashion, an important shift that hopefully won’t devolve into a marketing trend or pinkwashing.
There’s no risk of that at Lazoschmidl, where the pair, who are queer, continue to playfully explore references and narratives that are of interest to them, without an agenda and without putting a label on what they do. “It’s not about queerness per se, it’s about body culture, body self identification, and freedom is always there,” said Schmidl on a call. “But having fun with it, not going to fight for something, and like we always said,” added Lazo, “it’s also offering an alternative to whatever is there. Now the alternative is there…” “…so that’s why we got even more crazy!” Schmidl interjected.
Circling back to the subject Lazo said: “When looking at other collections from brands that maybe didn’t start off so queer, but obviously there are queer people designing it, they have since the last few seasons started doing more queer aesthetics, using a lot of latex, a lot of porn references, and going really hard on the sex image; whereas there are sex references in some of our garments, but the overall the aesthetic is still fun and colorful. It’s not like a penis in your face, it’s not that kind of aesthetic, so I think that makes it also a bit camp.” “And we always have this little feeling of kawaii,” added Schmidl, who said the season’s theme was a cute boy going into a dark bar. Which just might mirror the experience of being an indie brand in a corporate setting…
In any case, fall’s line-up was a bit of a greatest hits collection, with existing designs like a bodysuit with cut-outs at the waist and suspender pants being revisited in new materials. This makes sense within the framework of the season. The collection is titled Fruit, Flowers and Fluoride, “all the essentials of life” quipped Schmidl—and the artwork was made by a friend who generated it using AI. In addition to the “forbidden fruit” on offer in prints and knits, overalls and pants had knee reinforcements, which added a bit of a workwear touch to a somewhat repetitive collection. The sports-inspired pieces, like the closing one piece and an aerodynamic floral cyclin shirt with a butterfly motif paired with lace-front joggers, were especially strong.
Lazo and Schmidl are storytellers who look at each collection as a chapter, and this one had plenty of page-turning moments. More important overall is that in sharing their true tales without compromise, the duo seemed to have encouraged others to do the same, uncompromised. Here’s to Lazoschmidl keeping the presses rolling.
