On Thursday, Zara releases the first collection John Galliano has created for the chain. The raw material is clothes Zara has already made. It’s a cool move, and a fairly clear answer to everyone who has criticised the chain for overproducing.
Galliano makes new from old
Re(form), Vol. 1 launches on 1 October at 10 am, online and in selected stores. The collaboration was announced in March and runs for two years, with a new collection every season.
It’s the method that sets this apart from a regular designer collaboration. Galliano dives into Zara’s archive of garments from previous seasons, takes them apart and sews them together into something new. Zara itself says the collection is built on the chain’s own memory, but made for now.
It’s hard not to get excited. Galliano has led Dior and was creative director at Maison Margiela for ten years. Now he’s taking the scissors to Zara’s old clothes, and it’s the first time he has designed for a mass-market brand.
An answer to the criticismZara is the very symbol of fast fashion. Inditex, which owns the chain, has an annual turnover of around 40 billion euros and more than 5,000 stores. The criticism has long been about the same thing: too many garments, too short a lifespan and sustainability lines that are a fraction of what is actually produced.
At the same time, the rules are being tightened. Since July this year, large companies in the EU can no longer destroy unsold clothing and footwear. According to the European Commission, between 4 and 9 per cent of the textiles placed on the market in Europe are destroyed before they are used.
In that context, Re(form) is an elegant signal: we can make something new without starting from scratch. The fact that it’s Galliano saying it makes the message hard to ignore.
There’s a bit of greenwashing
But a capsule of remade archive pieces doesn’t change the business model. The rest of the range won’t be made any differently just because Galliano has been handed a pair of scissors.
Critics have already called the collaboration “luxurywashing”: a big designer name that adds sheen without anything fundamental changing. Galliano himself has described the project as sustainable “from a creative standpoint”. It’s a precise choice of words, and perhaps more honest than anything Zara has said.
And then there’s the quality. A garment that’s meant to be remade has to be able to withstand it. If Zara is serious about its clothes having a life after their first season, it has to show in the fabrics and seams across the whole range, not just in a couture capsule.
A step in the right direction
So is Re(form) greenwashing or a genuine shift? A bit of both. Zara still has some way to go on quality and on the throwaway culture the chain itself has helped build.
But for one of the world’s largest fashion chains to let one of the greatest designers use its own old clothes as raw material is a step in the right direction. And a very good campaign.
The exciting thing will be whether the idea lives on beyond Galliano’s collections. We’ll be watching on Thursday at 10 am.