John Galliano to Revisit Zara Archives in Unconventional Collaboration

LONDON – John Galliano is back at work, and teaming with Zara on an unconventional collaboration that will see the maverick couturier “re-author” the brand’s archives and create seasonal collections over the next two years.

An announcement is expected today.

Galliano and Zara have described their new project as a “creative partnership” where the designer will be working directly with clothes from Zara’s past seasons, “deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations,” a joint statement said.

“Guided by a couture process and authorship, the collections will be released seasonally,” beginning in September 2026. Further details will be announced in due course, the statement added.

It is understood Galliano will be creating new toiles inspired by the pieces in the Zara archives, and the collections will be filled with new shapes, fabrics, colors and clothing with his distinctive signature.

One of the industry’s most enduring talents who’s best known for his cutting skills, theatrical bent and way with a bias-cut dress, Galliano has been laying low since his departure from Maison Margiela, where he had a creatively and commercially successful 10-year run.

He might have been out of work for a while, but the 65-year-old designer has always been top-of-mind among his many fans.

He was a front-row guest at Jonathan Anderson’s debut Dior haute couture show earlier this year, while Joan Burstein, the 100-year-old doyenne of British fashion retail, told WWD that while times and tastes may have changed, Galliano “still has it.”

Burstein famously bought Galliano’s graduate collection in 1984 and sold it at her family’s multi-brand boutique, Browns, on London’s South Molton Street. The two have remained close ever since.

Galliano’s pieces for Dior, and his signature collection, are also a hit with collectors. Bonhams New York is currently auctioning a series of Y2K-era, bias-cut slip dresses as part of a Dior online sale. Called “From the Vault: Dior,” it features 127 designs from multiple Dior designers and is taking place until March 20.

Bonhams said one of the highlights is a red damask gold embellished gown from the fall-winter 1997 ready-to-wear collection, Galliano’s first for the house.

Marissa Speer, Bonhams’ head of sale for handbags and fashion in the U.S., said that Galliano “created some of the most recognizable and sought-after designs of the late 1990s and early 2000s,” including the masterfully engineered bias-cut slip dresses, inspired by the pioneering techniques of Madeleine Vionnet.

“Though often deceptively simple in appearance, these gowns were technically complex, cut on the bias to contour the body. Today, Galliano’s bias-cut slip dresses remain highly prized by collectors and are emblematic of his visionary approach to femininity and craftsmanship. Their enduring desirability continues to generate significant interest at auction,” she added.

Prized for his ultrafeminine, historically inspired designs, Galliano joined Dior in 1996, quickly making his name not just as couturier but as a showman, with historically and culturally rich shows that could rival the best West End productions.

For years he reigned as fashion’s wunderkind, but was eventually ousted from Dior, and his signature fashion house, in 2011 following racist and anti-Semitic outbursts. The outbursts, and his increasingly erratic behavior, led to one of the most spectacular flameouts in recent fashion history.

He made a brief comeback in 2013, working on Oscar de la Renta’s fall collection as part of a three-week residency, but it was Margiela’s owner Renzo Rosso who offered Galliano a chance for renewal, naming him creative director of the Belgian house. The designer embraced it with gusto, breathing new life into Margiela – and his own career.

By the time Galliano left, sales had multiplied five-fold to around $500 million, and he and Rosso had forged an enduring partnership.

Galliano’s spring 2024 Maison Margiela Artisanal collection was a tour de force, showcasing new ways to encrust lace, create sequins with fabric, drape tulle, shrink and glue tweed, ridge and groove fabrics to resemble cardboard, and to imbue garments with subliminal gestures via “emotional cutting.”

He is the latest designer to collaborate with Zara – following Stefano Pilati, Narciso Rodriguez, Samuel Ross and Ludovic de Saint Sernin – and also the most significant one.

His appointment is part of a wider strategy by Zara to align itself with contemporary luxury brands and top creative talents, and leave any fast-fashion references behind. Last year, for Zara’s 50th anniversary, the brand collaborated with friends, brands and creatives, including Steven Meisel, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Pieter Mulier, to design the object of their desire.

Zara’s partnerships aren’t just in fashion. The brand has been working with the perfumer Jo Malone for years on a series of premium fragrances, and tapped Ramdane Touhami, owner of design agency Art Recherche Industrie, to create a concept café for its stores, now known as Zacaffè, with the first opening in Madrid in 2024. The longtime collaborator of Zara Home is the Belgian architect, interiors and product designer Vincent Van Duysen.

Inditex chair Marta Ortega Perez, daughter of the company’s billionaire founder Amancio Ortega, has been behind that momentum. She’s been bringing design credibility to the brand once associated with fabulous – but throwaway – fashion.

She has steadily burnished Zara’s image, attracting a crowd of celebrity creatives to the company’s home in A Coruña, in the Galicia region of northern Spain, with a series of fashion photography shows at her new MOP (Marta Ortega Perez) Foundation.

The latest one, “Wonderland,” is the first major survey of Annie Leibovitz’s work in Spain. It opened in November, runs until May, and is the sixth in a series of photography exhibitions presented by MOP.

The first exhibition, which opened in December 2021, presented the work of Peter Lindbergh while subsequent shows have featured Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn and, most recently, David Bailey.

Galliano’s appointment is also the latest in a long list of marquee designer pairings with high street brands.

Clare Waight Keller, formerly of Givenchy, is now creative director of Uniqlo, while Jonathan Saunders has joined & Other Stories as chief creative officer. Zac Posen is now at Gap and Aaron Esh sits at the creative helm of AllSaints.

For seasoned designers who’ve done the rounds of the big fashion houses, working for a high street brand is not just a viable option, but an increasingly coveted one.

In an interview last year, Mary Gallagher, senior consultant at Find executive consulting, said there is “no longer a stigma or snobbism about going down-market when the project is exciting to a creative director who wants to build something.”

Moira Benigson, founder and chair of The MBS Group, said “the high street is catching up, and has caught luxury napping, living in the past, and not keeping up with where customers are going.” She pointed to “overinflated prices for goods that can be as nicely made and on trend on the high street” at places like Gap, Marks & Spencer, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M.

Galliano shaking up the Zara archives? Maybe it’s not so unconventional.

-With contributions from Miles Socha, Paris