Zara, which has been upping its retail game in recent years, has taken things to a new zenith in Paris, taking over a historic mansion in the Marais district to showcase the first Re{form} Zara collection designed by John Galliano.
The “by-appointment experience,” running from Thursday through Tuesday, is set up as an immersive exhibition that tells the backstory of Re{form} Zara, whose tag line reads “authored by couturier John Galliano.”
It’s worlds away from the smash-and-grab days of Karl Lagerfeld for H&M, which kicked off a frenzy of high-low collaborations more than 20 years ago.
Once past security, visitors alight upon a picturesque, cobblestoned courtyard set up like a little neighborhood, complete with a Wallace fountain, corner café, flower stand and cobbler that curiously specializes in washing shoes in giant tumblers.
Once inside the building, they are plunged into an atmosphere that is part fun house, part art gallery and part museum, with surprises — and the odd shock — along the way.
(Spoiler alert: After rounding one darkened corner, a video wall flickers to life with a train barreling through the room, complete with a blast of air and a roar of clickety-clack.)
The journey moves through several rooms jumbling period French architecture, the first meekly lit with artificial moonlight and video monitors that flicker out from cracks in the wall. On them, Galliano can be seen tinkering with clothes, while above the music his voice can be heard saying things like, “I didn’t want to dumb it down.”
Indeed, the “reading room” showcases the many books, images and objects that fire the designer’s imagination, from Ernest Hemingway novels to a pint-sized statue of Napoleon under a bell jar.
The historical objects are all from Galliano’s personal collection, ranging from a delicately embroidered bicorn hat to sketches from his 1984 graduation collection, titled “Les Incroyables,” which launched his career. (It was named after the flamboyant, satirical young dandies of post-revolutionary France.)
Galliano described the elaborate Paris pop-up as “an invitation into the mind of a couturier, to discover not only the final expression, but the imagination, research and technical development that bring a collection to life.”
To wit: The “game room” delves into the nitty-gritty of how Galliano went from rather simple garments from the Zara archives — a white cotton dress shirt or a calico slipdress bearing a Zara Srpls label — to far more elaborate styles.
A view of the Zara x John Galliano pop-up space in Paris.
Courtesy Photo/Luca Bonnefille
Analogous to the podcasts he did during his acclaimed 10-year tenure as creative director of Maison Margiela, Galliano provides audio commentary, along with thorough documentation of his complex, multilayered research process.
The designer’s team wore GoPros as the garments evolved into their final form. The slipdress, for example, ended up in black tulle with a heavy band of faux fur at the hem, which can be worn under a woolen coat.
About a dozen mock work stations broadcast the footage on small monitors, and visitors can study stacks of work-in-progress images that also function as flip books. You can pick up a little speaker to hear Galliano explain his working methods, including his “memory of” technique that leaves traces of garment features, like pockets.
His designs echo a rich historical period, but in a glancing way.
“As I entered into a dialogue with garments from the Zara archive, ‘Les Incroyables’ and ‘Les Merveilleuses’ began to reappear and a narrative instinctively took shape,” Galliano told WWD. “Through objects from my personal collection, I wanted to show how history, memory and artifacts can ignite the creative process.”
Armed with all that knowledge, visitors can finally shop the collection installed in two brightly lit rooms set up like a couture salon of yore — although some of the candelabra and paintings are upside down.
There is no stock on the sales floor: Attendants with iPads summon the desired garments to designated fitting rooms, and purchases are elaborately packaged.
Retail prices range from under 20 euros for a scarf up to 719 euros for a dreamy bias-cut gown in point d’esprit with flowery tendrils.
On Wednesday night, Galliano cohosted a dinner with Marta Ortega Pérez, the non-executive chair of Zara parent company Inditex, who brought the designer into the fold. A no-photo policy was enforced at what was described as a “private social gathering rather than a media moment.”
Indeed, the launch — the collection drops Thursday at Zara flagships in Madrid and London, as well as on zara.com — was among the more under-the-radar moments of Paris Fashion Week.
It came less than a month after Galliano pulled out of a planned retrospective of his career that was scheduled to debut next May at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The prospect of the show unleashed fresh public backlash, donor pushback and criticism from government officials over drunken outbursts in 2010 and 2011, which led to Galliano’s dismissal from Christian Dior and his eponymous label, and his conviction by a Paris court for “public insults based on race, religion, ethnicity or origin.”
Zara revealed a two-year collaboration with Galliano last March. It will see the maverick, controversial couturier create seasonal collections over the next two years working directly with clothes from the retailer’s past seasons, “deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations,” according to the Spanish fashion giant.
