Let’s start where it matters. John Galliano gave us some of the greatest fashion moments ever put on a runway. The homeless chic collection that shocked Paris in 1999. The Egyptian goddess gowns. The bias-cut evening wear that made grown women cry in the front row. And yes, the Rasta Saddle bags, the Trotter canvas in every colorway imaginable, the denim oblique, the logo everything that somehow never felt cheap because Galliano made it feel like costume and couture at the same time. His Dior was the kind of fashion that made people care about fashion. The kind that made you want to pull a vintage piece out of a wardrobe twenty years later and still feel the reference.
And now… We can find him at Zara ?
Zara shoppers, do they know what they’re getting? Do they know about the SS2000 runway, the newspaper print, the Victorian mourning dress that closed a show and stopped time? Or are they just buying a nice blouse that happens to have his name attached to it?
We’re not being snobby about this or at least we’re trying not to be. Fashion reaching more people is generally a good thing. The idea that beautiful design should only be accessible to people who can spend four figures on a bag is exactly the kind of thinking that makes the industry insufferable. But there’s a difference between democratising fashion and diluting it. And we’re not entirely sure which one this is.
Here’s the part that makes this complicated. We all know the story. The incident in 2011, the antisemitic remarks, the fall from Dior. Galliano disappeared, went to rehab, resurfaced at Maison Margiela where he built one of the most critically acclaimed second acts in fashion history. The Artisanal collections. The Bianchina. The decortiqué technique that looked like fashion being unwound in real time. A genuine artistic reinvention that most people in his position would never have managed.
We are very good at separating the art from the artist when the art is good enough. Fashion does this better than almost any other industry. And his work at Margiela was good enough that most of us let ourselves do exactly that.
But this collaboration asks us to do something slightly different. It asks us to consume him casually. At scale. On a Saturday afternoon between trying on trousers and buying a candle. And something about that feels worth sitting with.
This is the question we ask ourselves selfishly, because it’s our business and we love those pieces. The Rasta Saddle. The newspaper print bags. The denim logo everything from the early 2000s that is currently having its moment on every resale platform worth visiting.
Does a Zara collaboration raise awareness of the archive and drive more people toward the vintage? Or does it create a version of Galliano that feels accessible enough that nobody needs to go looking for the real thing?
Our instinct is that it goes both ways. The people who will discover Galliano through Zara and then fall down the rabbit hole of his Dior years are exactly the kind of customer we want to exist. The people who buy the Zara version and feel like they’ve had the experience, that’s a different story.
Honestly? We’re still deciding. Fashion has always been the best argument because it lets you hold two completely contradictory opinions at the same time and feel smart about both of them. Galliano is a genius. Galliano is complicated. Fast fashion is a problem. Access to design is important. Vintage is better. New audiences matter.
Carrie Bradshaw, what do we think girl.
Come find us at Mechelsesteenweg 26 and tell us where you land. We’ll be there Tuesday through Saturday with opinions, coffee we forgot to finish, and at least one Galliano piece on the rack that will make this whole conversation feel very concrete very fast.
