Zara Larsson Summer Is Just Getting Started – Exclusive

In Zara Larsson’s world, another week means another career peak: from a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and a no. 1 on the Spotify Global chart with her PinkPantheress collab, “Stateside,” to her first-ever Grammy nomination, the last six months of the Swedish singer’s life has been a thing of dreams. But despite her rising profile and long overdue ascension to pop superstardom, she’s still the same, unserious girl she’s always been.

Take her latest campaign with her lingerie brand Main Rose, for example. The new collection marks the brand’s first foray into swimwear — a natural move for the leader of the never-ending summer movement. And while most brands would opt to lean into the steamy, beach-babe imagery, Larsson made sure to include some less-than-flattering shots of her wearing snorkeling goggles underwater. “I like to have fun and I want to bring that into the Main Rose world,” Larsson tells NYLON. “It's not so serious because I'm not that serious.”

Though she just wrapped a 30-city North American tour, don’t expect Larsson to disappear for long. The 28-year-old has a deluxe edition of her 2025 album Midnight Sun in the chamber, and if it’s anything like her recent collab with Tyla, you can expect the project to pack a punch with back-to-back song-of-the-summer contenders. In between stops and soundchecks on the sold out tour, Larsson managed to find some time in her busy schedule to hop on the phone and chat about the Main Rose swimwear launch, working with PinkPantheress, and the “motherquake” that is Midnight Sun: Girls Trip.

It's obviously been a very busy few months for you. How are you feeling?

I have a day off today. I am tired, but very excited. It's a weird in-between of feeling tired but inspired. I've loved being on this tour. We have three more shows left, and it's going to be really sad when it's over. I really enjoy this a lot. This is where I truly come alive, and it's nice with some sort of routine. I know what every day's going to look like, which is really nice for me.

When did you find the time to work on this collection?

Oh, girl. You know what's funny? Even though I've had a really busy couple of months, this all started quite a while back, probably closer to a year. So even though this comes out now and it's the perfect timing, obviously for summer and also because now everyone thinks of me as this summer queen, this definitely started a while back.

I'm in a million group chats, and to be completely honest, I don't check all of them. A lot of the time it's just like, “OK, girl, let's sit down and let's go through it all. Let's talk about it. How do we feel about this? How do we feel about that?” But these bikinis and swimwear have really been a part of the Main Rose universe internally for a very long time.

How did you take what you've learned about lingerie and apply it to this collection?

We've taken a lot of the models from the underwear and just changed the fabrics, changed the patterns and the colors, and made it more fun. I like that Main Rose is very layer friendly and you can still wear it as a part of the outfit. I wear the bra under the mesh top a lot, and then I feel like I'm dressed to go out. It's fun and sexy, but a bikini is obviously the whole outfit in itself. We just took a lot of the same cuts and made sure that you could swim in it essentially and made it a bit more expressive and colorful, which I also think fits really well into my world and how I'm seeing Main Rose and myself being even more connected visually.

I'm really excited for the campaign. Charlotte Rutherford shot it all, and she's been doing my visuals for this last year of Midnight Sun. She's very fun and playful, and I am that. I want to make sure that people are part of that universe.

Such a big part of creating a brand is, what is the story you want to tell? What do you want people to feel like when they see it, when they see the brand? I've learned a lot from Midnight Sun, because I feel like that's actually the first time I, as an artist, have created an era and a universe for people to come into.

I heard you shot the campaign while you were on tour in Miami. What was the vibe of the shoot like?

It was so fun. Miami is such a fun place. We were a bit outside of Miami in Key Largo. Florida in general is a cuckoo place for me. I love that state. I don't know what it is, I just come alive. The nature is so beautiful. I love the Everglades. I love that you can go out and be in this clear water with the fishes.

[The] majority of [the campaign] is shot underwater, and it's just schools of fish swimming around. The water is crystal clear. I'm wearing these mermaid fins. I'm also wearing really tight swimming goggles, the snorkeling ones, so I wonder what my face looks like. But it's a very fun campaign. Charlotte always makes it look amazing. She is a very playful director and photographer, which I think is a big part of who I am.

The first campaign that we did with the underwear was so beautiful and it really focused on the products of it all. But I would say this is more merging with me, who I am. Even though I want Main Rose to feel bigger than I am. I want what I feel like right now to be influenced by that.

I got to see the campaign mood board as well, and you're on it, along with a lot of beachy iconography like Pam Anderson and Baywatch and Spring Breakers. What was the inspiration behind that?

I just love the aesthetic of [Spring Breakers]. I love the mood, the carefree-ness, the colors, the wild and freeness, the pop of neon. I feel like it's very Spring Breakers, which is also something I was really inspired by in the collection. I love to have neutrals mixed in with a hot pink or a hot neon yellow.

Baywatch and Pam Anderson [are] just classics. She's just the ultimate sexy beach girl and I just think she's so incredible. Very glamorous beauty references — the icon-ery of that. I would love for people to see these images and reference them a very long time from now.

Shifting gears for a second, “Stateside” has become such a huge hit. What has the reception been like for you?

Incredible. PinkPantheress really did so much for me, indirectly and directly. I'm such a fan of hers. I was on tour with Tate [McRae] and I f*cking ran to the studio when she sent me that song. I literally had it done and recorded the day after she sent it. I was so excited to be a part of her musical journey. As she sent it, I didn't know that it’d become the hit that it is now. I just knew I loved her, I love the song, and I would do anything to be a part of her remix album. It was so incredible to see people's reactions on my verse as well — which I give many, many thanks to MNEK, who is my guy, my collaborator. He wrote a huge majority of that verse, and then I changed a few sentences to make it fit me better.

[PinkPantheress] is the epitome of the girl who is being herself, doing what she wants to do and who is not just a part of culture, but creates culture and shifts it. You can only kind of do that by being 100% authentically yourself. I'm really inspired by the way she works. Although I recorded my verse on the road, we've been in the studio together since then, and she's a beast in that production chair. She knows exactly what she wants, and she does it unapologetically, and that's really, really inspiring.

“Stateside” opened doors for me and introduced me to a big mainstream audience, which is so incredible because I feel like Pink is also someone who is mainstream, but at the same time, she's so not because she's really not trying to be. She's not chasing that validation from the mainstream public. It just happens to be that she's incredible and people can't help but love her, including me. [The song] did a lot for me and the timing has been insane. I'm touring stateside right now and I get to see the people singing along to that song every night. She made me really cool. She helped me with that. She's so cool.

And now you have songs like “Midnight Sun” and “Lush Life” climbing the charts.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's f*cking crazy. It also shows that nothing is really linear ever. “Lush Life” had already been such a huge song, and now it has this… The fact that a song that is over a decade old is getting all this love by kids. I brought up seven girls in Miami during “Lush Life” because they were so cute and I just wanted to bring up the whole friend group. They were literally seven years old. I'm like, “Wow, the fact that you guys know this song and dance to this song and you weren't even born when this came out. It's really incredible.”

I think what's fun about me breaking the US now and traveling around the world is that I have so many songs in my catalog that are such a big part of who I am, and that people get to discover.

You've also been teasing a deluxe version of Midnight Sun for quite some time now.

Yes. Indeed. Coming out very soon.

You said it's going to feature artists that you've admired for a really long time. Is there a song that you're most excited for your fans to hear?

Literally every single one. It's going to be a f*cking motherquake. It's going to be so good.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.