It’s impossible, for this editor at least, to look at Lazoschmidl’s latest skivvy-focused collection and not think back to Calvin Klein and Bruce Weber’s ’90s underwear campaigns in which muscle-bound male models were made to look like Greek gods. The Lazoschmidl ideal is as mono, but tends to the other side of the spectrum, favoring mostly pale, skinny boy-men with indie vibes. Here, though, there’s no coding or hiding of the queer gaze.
The product is as direct as the imagery this season. The initial idea was to focus on creating new underwear styles, but the designers’ mental wheels got spinning and they conceptually placed the product within the context of clichés related to men’s fragrance advertising. “It’s a very heroic, very kitsch language,” noted Andreas Schmidl “It’s all about me, myself. I find the world around me, all this pathos.” In reaction he used AI to create camp images of boys holding stuffed animals that were used on T-shirts. This framework was also the starting point for music commissioned from Danish band First Hate and used in the film the brand shot in Barcelona with Daniel Riera.
It’s clear that this basics-focused collection certainly was built to please. At the same time, it retained a unique point of view and a certain timeliness. Not only were the metal-buckled chore jacket and sailor top on-trend, there was a sportiness to this line up that is in line with the overall interest in the intersection between athletics and fashion that was highlighted at Vogue World: Paris. And there was pleasure to be had in the small details. Those white jeans, for example, were overpainted to give them an unexpected texture. There was a belt made of an elastic logoed underwear band. Plus the new “tanga” underwear had side straps that, when styled to peek out above a low waist line, revealed a neatly framed sliver of skin (“tanga” is a Spanish word for thong). Emphasizing the waist and hips as an erogenous zone, models wore a delicate body chain, showing this accessory has crossover appeal.
What for other brands might be a trend is an unchanging world view here. Lazoschmidl is a small label that has often been ahead of the curve, paving a path from which others have profited. The title of this collection was Sweet Dreams, which might be ironic as these are difficult times indeed for independent brands. Josef Lazo and Andreas Schmidl were zine-ing together before they started designing as a duo (they continue to do both) and their brand retains a scrappy niche aesthetic that speaks directly to their fan base and is authentic. It’s passion that drives this duo forward. “This is our form of art,” said Lazo.“We’re going to do it how we want to do it.”