The Karl Lagerfeld company has birthed a very latest brand for spring 2023 with Gen Z in mind — and it has big ambitions for it.

“We consider that down the road the Karl Lagerfeld Jeans line can generate the same size of business like our primary line and we’ll resource accordingly, and can connect with our audience with this chance in mind,” said Pier Paolo Righi, chief executive officer of Karl Lagerfeld.

Boasting loose matches, daring colours and a fluid approach to gender definition, the primary drop lands Thursday on Karl.com and Zalando. Other key digital launch partners include About You, Answear and Farfetch.

The style house has long sold denim as a part of its main-line business, accounting for about 10 percent of the overall collection size.

In an exclusive interview, Righi characterised jeans as a “compliment to the general offering” — and an explosive one at that, with the denim portion logging a triple-digit increase over the past yr.

To launch the brand, shown under embargo during Paris Fashion Week in September alongside the primary spring 2023 Karl Lagerfeld collections, the Karl Lagerfeld Jeans line is overseen by design director Hun Kim and a “dedicated in-house team of denim experts,” in accordance with Righi.

While prices shall be lower than its main-line denim, “Karl Lagerfeld Jeans just isn’t a diffusion line, but its own brand with a latest logo, brand codes and identity,” Righi stressed.

There shall be separate men’s and girls’s collections, though most of the styles are considered gender-neutral “as Gen Z is dropping restrictive labels and embracing fluidity greater than ever,” in accordance with the chief. “We proceed Karl’s legacy by embracing his wit, playfulness and magnificence — we are only connecting it to the younger generation.”

To ensure, the brand’s late founder wholeheartedly embraced jeans as a part of his uniform after a dramatic weight reduction within the early 2000s.

He favored black denim, and sometimes wore jeans from his signature brand printed with a camouflage-like repetition of his cameo.

“They were his day by day ‘go-to,” is how Righi puts it.

The project matches the late founder’s vision for his signature house, reconfigured in 2011 as a digitally driven brand within the “masstige,” or inexpensive luxury, category.

Righi said Karl Lagerfeld Jeans shall be sold in physical stores eventually.

“But for launch now we have decided to take a digital-first approach apart from our Marais store in Paris, which is able to grow to be a dedicated Karl Lagerfeld Jeans store for the second drop on Feb. 2,” he said, referring to the unit at 25 Rue Vieille-du-Temple.

Campaigns shall be digitally focused for a digitally native generation, spanning user-generated content, social-media activations and influencer initiatives, in accordance with the brand.

Righi described a “fully integrated approach” with multiple touch points. The brand plans to “focus very strongly on TikTok,” but Instagram will remain a very important platform, too.

“We wish to construct a various community,” Righi said. “Every individual has the ability to talk out and we wish to develop conversations, collaborating with creatives from varied and inclusive backgrounds.”

Fashion-wise, Karl Lagerfeld Jeans will offer skinny, straight-leg and relaxed matches in denim alongside a spread of denim jackets, “layering essentials” and sportswear items bearing abstract and camouflage-like patterns.

Cropped tops, hoodies and bomber jackets telegraph the youthful spirit of the road, while color-blocked jersey, gradient washes and bouclé-effect denim add visual punch.

In keeping with Kim, the look is “creative, authentic and effortlessly cool, for trend-setters and rule breakers.”

He noted that Lagerfeld “was a master of blending cool, rock-chic denim with more dressed-up pieces,” referring to his uniform of dark jeans, a white shirt, black tie and a tailored jacket with some pizzazz.

An intense blue, Pantone 2736 C, dominates the branding and appears on box logos, buttons, toggles and rivets. Hun said he got the concept for the Yves Klein-esque shade from a photograph shoot Lagerfeld did for Interview magazine. “When people have a look at this blue, I would like them to take into consideration Karl Lagerfeld Jeans, so we actually focused on the colour after which we built a story around it,” he said.

There’s a green element, too: According to the corporate’s eco ambitions, many items in the gathering are made with organic cotton and recycled polyester created from postconsumer and post-industrial materials like PET plastic bottles and apparel. Items that contain not less than 50 percent of sustainable materials are to hold a Karl Cares hangtag.

The corporate noted that denim is finished with techniques that use less water and energy than traditional denim manufacturing.