The Tamesis
John Galliano returns to the studio: Spanish retailer Zara has signed a two-year creative partnership with the design legend, who will “re-create” the brand’s archives. Following the audacious feats and virality of his final artisanal show for Maison Margiela in 2024, Galliano returns to the fashion world after a two-year absence.
“I’ve been sorting through some of Zara’s recent archives,” Galliano told us Fashion During Paris Fashion Week. “My idea was to re-create them.” The project emerged from a conversation between Galliano and Marta Ortega Perez, chairman of Zara parent company Inditex and daughter of Inditex founder Amancio Ortega. “I met Marta through MOP [the Marta Ortega Perez Foundation] “And the wonderful exhibitions she put on — Steven Meisel, Irving Penn,” Galliano explains. (MOP was founded in 2022 to organize photography and fashion exhibitions in A Coruña, Spain.) “Through these exhibitions, we started to develop a friendship. I just loved her openness.”
Since Ortega Perez was appointed chairman in 2022, Zara has been collaborating with other high fashion designers, including Narciso Rodriguez and Stefano Pilati. It has also released capsule collections with fashion celebrities like Kate Moss and Meisel, but the partnership with Galliano is unique in that it will last more than two years.
Photography: Szilveszter Makó
“I’m super excited because it’s not something I’ve done before, so it’s exciting for me — the freshness, the excitement and the actual process,” Galliano noted. “Even my team, I have to keep reminding them every day: No, not this, not that. We are recreating. It’s very interesting and I just think it’s very interesting to me to be doing things at this time that are very positive and really sustainable from a creative perspective. “
In January, Galliano appeared in the front row at Jonathan Anderson’s debut show for Dior. Prior to his ten years at Maison Margiela, he served as creative director of Christian Dior from 1997 to 2011. “When I was in school, even before school, John was my hero,” Anderson said at the time, noting that Galliano had been designing Dior longer than the founder himself. “To me in today’s world, he yes Dior. ” Anderson’s collection was indebted to Galliano, referencing his past designs and incorporating cyclamen (the same cyclamen that Galliano showed the young fashion designer when they first met) in many pieces as well as the impressive Rodin Museum set.
Galliano has spent two years since leaving Margiela (which he calls “the carousel of madness”) “going to museums, walking through the woods without my phone, getting lost but not afraid of getting lost, relying on instinct again, reconnecting with it, like breathing properly.” He continued: “It’s been a valuable time to really think about what I want to do next. You think, Oh, this is what you have to doand, Oh, you’ll be like this for the rest of your life, you’ll be like that. Well, no – at some point, it’s good to stop and think, if you can. “
