“Built from our Memory, Made for Now.”
Zara enters a more theatrical fashion conversation with Re{form} Vol. 1, a campaign authored by couturier John Galliano, photographed by Steven Meisel, and conceived around Galliano’s unmistakable approach to character, history and transformation.
Rather than presenting clothes as isolated products, Re{form} feels like a complete cast of characters. The campaign takes fragments of fashion memory—romantic tailoring, eccentric hats, transparent dresses, corsetry, fur textures, elongated skirts and flashes of glossy color—and rearranges them for the present.
Built From Memory
The phrase “Built from our Memory, Made for Now” is particularly fitting when looking through the images.
Galliano has always understood fashion as storytelling, and the Re{form} cast appears almost as though it has wandered out of another century and landed directly inside Meisel’s studio.
There are echoes of aristocratic dress, military uniforms, bohemian decadence and turn-of-the-century portraiture. Berets and sculptural hats frame heavily styled hair, while scarves, gloves, ruffles and exaggerated collars add another layer of historical reference.
Yet nothing feels like straightforward costume reproduction.
Instead, those references have been broken apart and recombined.
The Men of Re{form}
The menswear is especially compelling because traditional masculine tailoring is continuously disrupted.
Dark oversized coats and structured jackets are worn with scarves, cropped trousers, glossy pants, bright socks and unusual headwear. Elsewhere, bare torsos appear beneath tailoring, removing some of the formality traditionally associated with these silhouettes.
The styling plays with the boundaries between masculine and feminine wardrobes rather than treating them as separate worlds.
One of the strongest recurring elements is proportion. Long coats meet abbreviated trousers; severe black tailoring is interrupted by vivid red; luxurious fur-like textures sit against glossy fabrics. Even relatively conventional pieces become part of something more eccentric once Galliano’s styling takes over.
These aren’t anonymous models simply displaying garments. Each appears to have been given a personality.
Steven Meisel Keeps the Fantasy Sharp
Steven Meisel’s photography gives all that theatricality room to breathe.
The almost clinical white background is important. Instead of placing the models inside an elaborate historical set, Meisel isolates them, allowing the styling, gestures, makeup and personalities to construct the world themselves.
Group portraits resemble an eccentric family photograph. Couples lean into one another with exaggerated intimacy. Individual portraits move closer, allowing blue lipstick, rouged cheeks, teased hair and carefully arranged accessories to become almost as important as the clothes.
The contrast works beautifully: Galliano brings the fantasy; Meisel gives it precision.
Fashion as Character
Perhaps the most interesting element of Re{form} Vol. 1 is its rejection of anonymous fashion imagery.
Look across the campaign and everyone is performing.
Bodies bend, hands reach, couples embrace and groups assemble in strange formations. Models aren’t merely standing in looks; they’re inhabiting them.
That approach makes the clothes feel less like a seasonal uniform and more like tools for creating identity.
There is also an intentional sense of imperfection. Hair explodes outward, makeup is heightened, silhouettes clash and styling sometimes feels almost excessive. But excess is precisely where the campaign finds its energy.
It recalls an era when major fashion campaigns could create entire imaginary worlds within a single photograph.
Re{form}, Rather Than Recreate
The title Re{form} ultimately explains what is happening here.
This isn’t simply nostalgia.
Galliano reaches into fashion’s collective memory—tailoring, couture, historical dress, subculture, romance and theatricality—and reforms those references into something designed to exist now.
And with Steven Meisel behind the camera, Zara Re{form} Vol. 1 becomes more than another seasonal campaign.
It becomes a fashion image-making exercise: strange, romantic, glamorous and unapologetically styled.
Authored by Couturier John Galliano. Built from our Memory, Made for Now.
Thank you @anna.bicanova @josephenakuei @worldbyfred
Designer: The Couturier John Galliano @jgalliano
Photographer: Steven Meisel @stevenmeiselofficial
Stylist: Karl Templer
Makeup Artist: Pat McGrath @damepat
Hair Stylist: Guido Palau @guidopalau
Manicurist: Jin Soon @jinsoonchoi
Set Design: Mary Howard @maryhoward_setdesign
Casting: Piergiorgio Del Moro @piergiorgio
Production: PRODn, Production at Art + Commerce @prodn_artandcommerce
