This evening, as Paris Fashion Week continues in the city where the British designer made his name – first with his eponymous label, then as creative director of Givenchy, Dior and Maison Margiela – John Galliano has revealed his much-anticipated collaboration with Spanish fashion behemoth Zara, Re{form}.
Arriving in stores tomorrow morning (October 1) – the date on which the collection was expected to be revealed – the surprise announcement marks Galliano’s return to fashion after leaving Maison Margiela in December 2024 following a ten-year tenure. It also comes in the wake of the cancellation of a retrospective of his work, ‘John Galliano: Horizons’, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Its opening would have coincided with the annual Met Gala, the biggest night of the fashion calendar, which takes place each year on the first Monday of May.
Re{form} Zara by John Galliano: Vol. 1
Galliano withdrew from the exhibition after controversy surrounding his past anti-semitic remarks in 2011, for which he was charged with a hate crime in France, and lost his job as creative director of Dior. After entering rehab, he apologised to Jewish leaders and returned to fashion with his role at Maison Margiela in 2014. ‘I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute,’ he said in a statement. ‘I also recognise and respect that an exhibition honouring my work would be painful for some.’
The collection, captured in a Steven Meisel-shot campaign, sees Galliano return to the theatrical signatures that made him one of the most celebrated designers of recent times. His shows for Dior in particular, which unfolded amid dramatic show sets and mined history for inspiration, are embedded in fashion lore, while his closing Artisanal show for Maison Margiela, held under the full moon, saw him conjure a troupe of doll-like figures on the misted banks of the River Seine (at the time, we said they recalled ‘at once Fragonard’s shepherdesses and the seedy nighttime denizens of Brassaï’s Paris en Nuit’, their faces rendered like gleaming porcelain by make-up artist Pat McGrath).
With this first collection – part of an ongoing two-year partnership with the brand – Galliano says he is drawing on ‘memories of Zara’, reworking past pieces through acts of ‘cutting, dismantling and reassembling’ (as such, it recalls his work at Maison Margiela, where he was inspired by house founder Martin Margiela’s deconstructionist principles). ‘Re{form} is an act of revolution, reconstruction and renewal... the couturier’s exchange with the archives of the fashion purveyor,’ say the collection notes.
Several of Galliano’s hallmarks feature: among them dresses cut on the bias (the pattern-cutting technique that remains most associated with the designer, particularly during his time at Dior); trompe l’oeil layering with garments deconstructed to reveal linings or underwear beneath; a rich array of fabrics (‘chiffon voilant, georgette, point d’esprit, charmeuse, tulle and net’); and references to historical costume, from Napoleonic naval coats and opera gloves to ceremonial millinery created alongside Stephen Jones, a longtime collaborator.
Indeed, influences for the collection include Les Incroyables and Les Merveilleuses, ‘the defiant dandies and divas of post-Revolutionary France’. The former was the title of his 1984 Central Saint Martins graduate show, which would propel him to overnight fame; the latter a perennial reference throughout his career, inspiring collections at his eponymous label, Givenchy and Maison Margiela.
Elsewhere, he has divided the collection into various ‘techniques’: Re{form}ing (the idea that every garment references the Zara archive), The Flix (a sheer coat that can be layered over other coats in the collection), The Shi/ft (a means of transforming one garment into another) and Deep Pockets (the use of expansive pockets designed to shape the way the wearer inhabits a garment), among others.
The collection will be on view as an installation in a hôtel particulier in the Marais during Paris Fashion Week, which is accessible by appointment via zara.com. Meanwhile, the collection itself will be available to shop globally from tomorrow, October 1, at zara.com and stores worldwide.