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"  The boys had made it big, and now they&amp;#039;d made it even bigger, and so they were here this day, in their studio, taking a moment to reflect on their image \u2014 wondering if they even had one to speak of. Known as fashion&amp;#039;s fairest faces, the boys behind the curtain at Proenza Schouler were still kind of nerdy, they&amp;#039;d decided. It didn&amp;#039;t matter that they&amp;#039;d just sold a 45 percent stake in the business to the Valentino Fashion Group for $3.7 million. Twenty-nine years old, and the responsibilities of inflated bank accounts \u2014 and inflated expectations \u2014 loomed. Now came the pressure to grow up. Tuck in those shirttails before shambling out on the runway for the traditional postshow meet-and-greet. And maybe comb that hair, as they&amp;#039;d been advised.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m, like, unnnh. I just really can&amp;#039;t be bothered,&amp;quot; says Lazaro Hernandez, the son of a salon owner, running his \uFB01ngers through those pitch-black waves. Doodling on a pad is Proenza Schouler&amp;#039;s other joint chief and a recovering Deadhead, Jack McCollough, his moonbeam-blue eyes dancing.  After the boys collaborated on their senior thesis at Parsons School of Design, Barneys bought their entire collection, which was piloted into stores wearing their mothers&amp;#039; maiden names. Slapped together, &amp;quot;Proenza Schouler&amp;quot; seemed a vaguely thrilling, Euro-fabulous roller coaster of vowels. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t wanna put our names on it,&amp;quot; Lazaro explains. What if it bombed? That&amp;#039;s what Jack was thinking. But caught in the headlights of immediate success, the designers say their dads are now a little depressed, Lazaro jokes. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re like, What&amp;#039;s wrong with our last names?&amp;quot;  There has been more drama in the discovery of the boys&amp;#039; prodigious talents than you&amp;#039;d get in an entire season of Project Runway. Neither likes admitting he&amp;#039;s sat through a few episodes of the show. &amp;quot;You watched it when it \uFB01rst came out. It was on your TiVo!&amp;quot; Jack tattles on Lazaro, adding that, in fairness, their mannerly Parsons mentor Tim Gunn is its de facto host.  Who dares begrudge the boys their untimely triumph? Less than a decade ago, they were the most enterprising of interns, Lazaro at Michael Kors and Jack at Marc Jacobs. There, they developed key relationships. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know if Marc and Michael would like to hear: &amp;#039;Oh, we stole your factories and all your resources,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Jack.  But of course they did. And they&amp;#039;ve been forgiven. Tom Ford, Nicolas Ghesqui\u00E8re, Narciso Rodriguez \u2014 all had advice for the taking, as did the (comparatively) elder statesman Oscar de la Renta, with whom the pair shared the most recent Council of Fashion Designers of America Womenswear Designer of the Year award. De la Renta once found the boys a consulting gig to help float the operation while they built the company off a small loan from Jack&amp;#039;s dad, a former international-investment-banking head at Merrill Lynch who was such a suit, Jack&amp;#039;s suburban New Jersey neighbors always wondered if he was in the CIA. It has never hurt the boys that they are, objectively speaking, kind of cute: Jack in his Top-Siders, who, shorn of his teenage dreadlocks, looks like he could competently man a spinnaker. Lazaro with his chocolate-syrup eyes and tremulous long lashes. &amp;quot;Talking about our looks is only ever annoying when people use looks as the reason for whatever&amp;#039;s happened to us,&amp;quot; says Lazaro.   Here&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s happening to them at this very moment:  With the velveted might of Valentino behind the boys, more stores will be getting their clothes earlier. If they&amp;#039;d signed with a big fat luxury group, they might have drowned in the messy sundae of everybody else vying for more attention, more money. Now they stand out as the only American brand in a loving family whose other members include Hugo Boss. It&amp;#039;s said that Valentino \u2014 whom the boys have met only casually, at the Metropolitan Museum&amp;#039;s Costume Institute ball \u2014 was getting ready to hand over his house keys. His people were in talks with the boys, only then, a private-equity firm suddenly assumed control of the entire group, and things shook out differently. Asked to comment, Lazaro observes that &amp;quot;no comment is a comment.&amp;quot; But with the boys in charge (which still might happen eventually), the House of Valentino could expect to see some furniture moved around.  &amp;quot;Pffffff, we don&amp;#039;t think couture is even that relevant,&amp;quot; Lazaro is saying.  &amp;quot;People aren&amp;#039;t going to those crazy balls every other day,&amp;quot; adds Jack. Mass brands like Target and H&amp;amp;amp;M have gotten so good that designer ready-to-wear is being elevated with the occasional couture items anyway, Lazaro explains. &amp;quot;That word demi-couture seems to be going around.&amp;quot;  Not that the boys believe mass equals crass; a few months ago, they dashed off some of their signature bustiers for Target.  &amp;quot;Target was scared about those bustiers,&amp;quot; says Lazaro. &amp;quot;They were like, oooohhhh, we don&amp;#039;t know-owwww,&amp;quot; Jack remembers. &amp;quot;And they sold out. Someone e-mailed us to say one was selling on eBay for, like, $400, and there were 25 bids. It was a $50 top!&amp;quot;  Now there will be sunglasses, handbags, shoes. &amp;quot;Shoes are such a mission,&amp;quot; says Jack wearily. &amp;quot;So many technicalities to consider, almost more so than clothes.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re like little pieces of architecture,&amp;quot; adds Lazaro. High-heel blueprints paper the walls in the office of their Chinatown loft showroom, with its temperamental elevator and its wizened operator. But now they can afford to move. &amp;quot;This building&amp;#039;s a little jenky,&amp;quot; Jack admits, those blue eyes roving around the room. In the way-back-when, Jack and Lazaro &amp;quot;used to live here, together,&amp;quot; says Jack. Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar editors once walked in on the boys in their underwear, ironing clothes for an early-morning appointment. &amp;quot;No one told us the editors tend to show up even earlier!&amp;quot; says Lazaro. &amp;quot;We, like, ran.&amp;quot; A breakup was rumored a while ago. Are they a couple? Or what? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s undefined,&amp;quot; says Lazaro enigmatically. Perhaps it is more advantageous to have investors believe the worst has already happened, and, look!  The boys have been such grown-ups about it all! Further conversation reveals they somehow share two dogs and a cat. And they just got back from Costa Rica, where they learned to surf. &amp;quot;It was extremely humbling, especially after 14 years of these guys,&amp;quot; says Jack, pointing at his pack of Marlboros. They have traveled to Bora Bora and returned with palm-frond prints. In Japan, they saw slutty Harajuku &amp;quot;maids&amp;quot; at a trendy coffee shop and responded with prim kimono dresses.   Their new stylist, Katie Grand, is the un\u00ADof\uFB01cial tiebreaker whenever the boys can&amp;#039;t come to terms in the studio. &amp;quot;She came from Europe, and she was all done up, and we were like, &amp;#039;wow-oww,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Lazaro.  Matched clothes and put-together suits are what fall&amp;#039;s all about. Jackets with helium-puffed sleeves. Dresses stamped with jet-beaded damask or hemmed with fur. Cloche flapper hats. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s subversive and young and cool now is to be old again,&amp;quot; says Lazaro. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s anti-anti.&amp;quot; What&amp;#039;s clear is that the boys enjoy fishing the &amp;#039;80s; Montana and/or Gaultier and/or Ala\u00EFa provide some d\u00E9j\u00E0 vu in any given season. Debbie Harry sat in the front row at their first show, at the National Arts Club. (&amp;quot;A friend brought her. We like people who are a little more like, fuck you, and tougher, cooler,&amp;quot; says Lazaro.) And Lazaro insists those bandage skirts weren&amp;#039;t ripping off Herv\u00E9 L\u00E9ger, paired as they were with baggy T-shirts or let out with pleats. &amp;quot;There was always an ironic quality,&amp;quot; he says, observing with resignation that even this last collection, a Herculean nod to Poiret, was deemed by some &amp;quot;the &amp;#039;20s via the &amp;#039;80s.&amp;quot;  Lazaro lived that decade in Cuban Miami, where Versace and Madonna were on the cusp of full sunburst. Jack was about to head off to Walnut Hill boarding school, where, come noon, academics were customarily overthrown by painting and sculpture. Their clothes seem to imagine what it would be like if Ellsworth Kelly and Mark Rothko had addressed tank tops and bustiers as canvases. Cy Twombly&amp;#039;s curlicues have been meticulously forged in wool skirts by the needleworkers of India. The boys would secretly love to dress artist-photographer Cindy Sherman, who has made a career shooting herself in various getups. &amp;quot;Her decision to wear something comes from a different place than most people, because it projects something she&amp;#039;s trying to say,&amp;quot; says Lazaro. And maybe their clothes might wind up enshrined in art. The boys generally \uFB01nd themselves inspired less by other designers&amp;#039; clothes than by girls they hang out with. Like Chlo\u00EB Sevigny. Or Mary-Kate Olsen. &amp;quot;They won&amp;#039;t be dictated to,&amp;quot; says Jack. &amp;quot;They open your eyes,&amp;quot; adds Lazaro. So do Vanessa and Victoria Traina, Danielle Steel&amp;#039;s scene-hopping daughters. &amp;quot;They have an actual love for clothes,&amp;quot; says Jack. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re not just socialites who show face at a party.&amp;quot;  Just for fun, Lazaro pegs his own retirement at age 45, 30 years younger than Valentino, who is still a-go-go at age 75. &amp;quot;When we started this, we had nothing. We were just these two little nerds out of school,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;What could we possibly have to lose?&amp;quot;  Fashion editor: Katie Grand; models: Veronika Antispava, Alyona Osmanova, and Carolina Pantoliano; hair: Diego Da Silva; makeup: Christian McCulloch; manicures: Myrdith McCormack. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a167/proenza-schouler-0907/>