This has the advantage of executing all your shell mcguffins too, so PYTHON4_LC_COLOR=Europe/Orange is set for the entire desktop session, not just the shells you launch from your desktop environment.
(By the way, exec is a fundamental Unix syscall of interest in that it replaces the current process’s code with new code. Your logout call will never run. The exec is the last thing zsh does before being replaced by sway.)
But I've never got DMs working without any problems, so I just have
in my .zprofile file, which just works (tm).