The DIY provocateur

Eric Schlösberg can’t stop. “The thing is, I do everything myself, out of pocket,” the 28-year-old says while on a break from his retail day job. “I have no investors at the moment; it’s not something that I’ve ever really wanted.” It’s been a few days since the presentation of his fall/winter 2017 collection, a sort of twisted mix of Alice in Wonderland and a New Jersey girl turned ’80s sex slave. It was the third outing for his eponymous line (ericschlosberg.com), which he started after folding Ammerman Schlösberg, the cult label he ran with a former Pratt Institute student. The two met while he was studying at Parsons, where he initially failed out of the fashion program for creating clothes his teachers deemed too “costumey.”

But things have changed. “The clothes are also a bit more elevated, just slightly more advanced,” says Schlösberg. The pieces are still anything but restrained—yet perhaps a bit easier to mix and match into an existing wardrobe. “I want the person who puts it on to feel outrageous and fabulous and to get that empowerment from the clothing,” he says. “But at the same time, I also don’t want them to be uncomfortable as soon as they leave the house.”

To get it all done, Schlösberg starts his days at 6am, when he answers press requests and sends out samples for the brand from his East Village apartment before walking to a factory in the Garment District. After that, it’s off to his day job at a luxury retailer in the West Village, then home to cook dinner with his husband, Logan Reed, founder of indie e-tailer Circe New York. Then it’s back to work on the line. Schlösberg planned to take a post–Fashion Week break, but his next collection is already underway. “It all came to me [as I was] walking to work yesterday, listening to my music,” he says regarding stepping right back into the hustle. Luckily, he has a plan to make all the sweat worth it: “I want to turn around in, like, five years, and have this amazing thing going, and have it all be mine.”

Buy his threads at: Opening Ceremony, 35 Howard St (212-219-2688, openingceremony.com)