But do we really want a Galliano anything via Zara?

John Galliano now working for Zara. Photo: Zara

Designers do avail their services to price-friendly brands. There is Zac Posen at The Gap. And Christophe Lemaire and Clare Waight Keller, both at Uniqlo. It is possible that Zara, too, wanted in on the the high-low game. The Spanish brand announced just an hour ago that John Galliano has joined them for a tenure of two years to “re-author” pieces from the Zara archives. We didn’t even know that for the level of design applied to their clothes, they even keep an archive. Zara’s business model is traditionally built on velocity rather than memory, but Inditex has apparently quietly maintained a massive physical archive at its headquarters in Arteixo, Spain, though it likely serves a very different purpose than the archives at Dior or Margiela. While latter’s archive are a library of inspiration, Zara’s is essentially a ledger of what sold. For Me Galliano to treat these as sacred texts is a brilliant bit of performance art on his part. For the historicist that he is, this might be just be too fun to miss out.

How much fun will be reflected in the designs, expected to be launched in September this year, is yet to be known, given the top-secret nature of the collaboration. But we can’t ignore the irony of what a man—famously known for spending weeks in the Dior archives researching 19th-century carriage drivers—may find in Spain is just a 20-year-old echo of his own influence when he was busy at the couture houses. For decades, Zara’s primary design language has been the translation of seasonal runway silhouettes into accessible retail. Their customers have been totally aware of that. Could “re-authoring” then mean that Mr Galliano might come face to face with pieces evocative of his past, with which he could make better? Or more expensive looking that could be sold for less? The idea of him deconstructing a Zara piece from, say, 2004, means that it’s probable that he is handling a garment that was originally a mass-produced homage to his own work at Dior or Givenchy. How tantalising it must be to re-tailor old tributes. Or to clean up a mess made of his work.

…he is handling a garment that was originally a mass-produced homage to his own work… how tantalising it must be to re-tailor old tribute

We are curious to know if the speed of Zara can actually wait for the slow meticulousness Mr Galliano is known for. Can a man who once insisted on hand-painted silks survive the haste of the high-volume model? How does his 19th-century-style romanticism meet the hyper-efficient, algorithmic logic of Inditex? We can only guess. By choosing to “re-author” the Zara archive rather than design from scratch, Mr Galliano could essentially be performing an upcycling project. He is given a dedicated atelier in Paris and his own team to hack apart Zara stock. We assume that deconstruction is part of his approach. Once that is finished, Zara’s massive technical team in Arteixo will likely use 3D pattern-mapping to reverse-engineer his silhouettes into something that can be cut by automated lasers. The “Galliano effect” that Zara seeks is often more about the cut than the cloth. But we likely won’t see 40-ply silk organza or hand-painted lace. Instead, we’ll see his signature bias-cut applied to heavy-duty viscose or polyester blends. It will look like a Galliano from the store window—the dramatic shoulder, the liquid drape—but it will likely feel like Zara when you make friends with the seam.

To note is that Zara has been aggressively moving upmarket to distance itself from ultra-fast fashion aggressors like Shein. This collection isn’t expected to follow the typical $39.99 pricing model. Perhaps closer to the Massimo Dutti pricing strategy. They aren’t selling to the casual shopping-centre loiterer; they are targeting those who queued overnight to score the 2012, pre-Galliano H&M X Margiela collection. Or those who knows exactly what a 1994 Galliano slip dress looks like, but can’t afford the auction price of US$100,000 (or thereabouts). Zara is well aware that the high-low pairing is often less about the clothes and more about the cultural proximity to true elevation that most will never touch. By emphasizing this as a “two-year creative partnership” rather than a one-off drop, Inditex is likely planning for smaller, more frequent releases. This allows them to use their near-shoring hubs, specialised factories in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco—which are capable of more complex tailoring than their high-volume Asian facilities—to maintain a semblance or a hint of high-end quality. Yet, we fear that “re-authoring” is just a polite term for dilution. If you take the theatricality out of John Galliano to make it fit a Zara price point, would you really have a collectible masterpiece, or just a very well-marketed souvenir of the past?