Palace and Moschino Unveil a New Collaboration

Palace Skateboards and Moschino seem like a match made in the stars. The irreverent skateboarding company got its start enhancing, let’s say, famous fashion brands’ logos, while Moschino is equally as infamous for its send-ups of Chanel suits, McDonald’s arches, and just about every other mainstream logo under the sun. But for all the synergy on paper, the collaboration unveiled today between the two brands is really one that’s about the partnership of two people: Palace’s Lev Tanju and Moschino’s Jeremy Scott. 

The pair met through mutual friends years ago. “I went over to his house, had a drink, and chatted to him,” Tanju says over the phone, explaining that Moschino has always been a dream brand to collaborate with. “I just brought it up and it just stemmed from there. We hung out and got on together. It was a very natural thing that happened. It wasn’t very corporate.”

“We met and just got off like gangbusters,” Scott agrees. 

After years of hanging out, the duo finally decided to make a Palace x Moschino collaboration real. Though most of the collection, which consists of printed shirts, shearling jackets, and a leather milk carton shoulder bag—“from Franco’s archive” Scott notes—was designed over email and Zoom, the project doesn’t lack heart. “Everyone we collaborate with is quite personal to us at Palace. We tend to do it with brands we really admire, appreciate, and wear a lot if it’s a clothing collaboration,” says Tanju. “On a selfish, personal level, I’ve always respected them as a super fun but chic brand. I’ve always just wanted to work with them.”

Because of Tanju’s knowledge of Moschino’s heritage, Scott took a backseat and let the Palace team run wild with ideas. “What’s really been different about this collaboration is I let them steer it,” he says. “Usually when I do collaborations it’s me really designing the whole idea. I wanted to let them have free rein about what they saw, their reverence for Franco’s archives, their ideas about my work. I wanted to see how that would manifest, then I came in and played a little in there, but I didn’t want to control it. I didn’t want to pollute it with my own vision as much as I wanted them to have their moment with it. That’s a very different thing than I’ve ever done before—period.” The final result, he says, is “very steeped in that British, 1990s, Moschino Jeans, going out to dance parties and raves culture and time.”

Fittingly, both Scott and Tanju settled on the same pieces as favorites: the all-over printed shirt and jeans with VHS-inspired graphics. “They look like classic Moschino, but it have a perfect Palace twist on what’s inside the graphic boxes,” says Tanju. “The vibrancy of the colors on the jeans is just amazing. Unbelievable. It looks like a painting.”

The collection is made in Italy, which is sure to inspire some of Palace’s legendary e-commerce captions. (Which, by the way, Tanju writes entirely himself.) “I should be able to do this really easily!” he says when put on the spot. “Some of them are going to be pretty boring, like ‘100% made in Italy’ because that’s pretty crazy for us. The fact that we’ve produced a whole line that’s made in Italy is quite a big thing, a London skateboarding brand.”

You will have to check Palace’s site for the full scope of Tanju’s copywriting prowess. “What I love about Lev and the boys is they’re so genuine. That’s authenticity,” Scott begins. “And they’re cheeky, you know. They’re cheeky lads, if I could speak a little mother tongue English.” 

In the States, we’d call it a no B.S. approach to design and business. That’s what keeps Palace going strong, even through the downturn of the pandemic. “Because we love what we do so much and we don’t do collaborations to make money, we do them because it’s our dream to work with the brands we work with. I guess, as long as we stay true to ourselves and make things that we really want, we’ll be alright,” Tanju says. “As long as we stay true to our heart, then, you know, we won’t go wrong.”