Zara by John Galliano Installation in Paris. Re{form} Zara, the creative partnership between the couturier John Galliano and Zara, will be unveiled as an ephemeral installation and by-appointment experience alongside Fashion Week in Paris.
Welcoming guests from 1-6 October 2026, from 11am until 8pm, the collection takes residence in a historic hôtel particulier at 70, Rue des Archives. Visitors are invited to book an appointment via Zara.com. The multidisciplinary experience stages an immersion into the inspiration and creative process of the couturier and serves as the exclusive Paris destination for Re{form} Zara.
Authored by the couturier John Galliano, Re{form} Zara is conceived from archival Zara garments and accessories re{form}ed by him using techniques native to haute couture, and reproduced in new materials. The presentation mirrors the premise of the collection through a sensory experience steeped in the craft and practice of the couturier John Galliano. Familiar surroundings are re{form}ed into warped spaces where the classic and contemporary clash. The collection is explored through extensive research, documentation of the creative process and audio commentary by the couturier John Galliano.
Echoing Re{form} Zara’s reflection of elements formative to his canon, the hôtel particulier situates the collection within architectural frames native to the couturier John Galliano’s scenographic authorship. Alongside sketchbooks and artefacts from the personal collection of the couturier John Galliano, still and moving imagery and sound trace how Les Incroyables and Les Merveilleuses, the post-Revolutionary French characters, instinctively resurfaced in Re{form} Zara. To preserve the experience of the Paris showcase, access to the ephemeral installation is by prior reservation only, with a limited number of guests welcomed at a time. Those attending will be welcomed by custodians. Globally, Re{form} Zara will be available in Zara flagship stores in Madrid and London, as well as on Zara.com, from 1 October 2026.
The Cour d’Honneur of 70, Rue des Archives opens like a portal to a place beyond time. Familiar fragments of Paris, a florist, a café, are unsettled by the riotous rhythm of shoes turning in the washing machines of a cordonnerie. Inside the hôtel particulier, an Escalier d’Honneur is bathed in a shadow play of Re{form} Zara silhouettes forming a haze of proportions.
The Antichambre draws guests into a nocturnal interior where storied tapestries surface in artificial moonlight. Behind swathes of drapery, filmic fragments of the Re{form} Zara process Flicker into view, accompanied by the voice of John Galliano himself reflecting on the collection.
In the Salle de Bal, walls are covered in latex as if frozen in time. Suspended from the ceiling in postures that informed the collection, 3D-printed mannequins, modelled on the couturier John Galliano’s muses Thomas Riguelle and Lulu Tenney, are dressed in calico toiles, the emotional gestures of the fabric preserved in glycerine. Native to the practice of haute couture, the prototypes serve as metaphorical homages to the Re{form} Zara process, in which the couturier John Galliano employed archival Zara garments as toiles.
The Salon de Lecture unfolds as a labyrinth of the couturier’s mind: a contemporary Wunderkammer of objects and imagery gathered throughout his career. Personal collectibles feature alongside handwritten notebooks, process work and sketches dating back to his formative years. Historical drawings, rare artefacts and period antiques form an expansive constellation of references, revealing the connections and collisions from which Re{form} Zara takes shape.
A corridor propels guests into another dimension through sound, vision and air effects portraying an underground train passing at speed. It leads to the Salon des Jeux: a laboratory of the de- and reconstructed elements of the collection. Here, a series of research modules, each dedicated to a single Re{form} Zara expression, exhibit the archival garment that inspired it and trace the documented evolution of the piece into its final re{form}ed manifestation. Interactive monitors project details from the collection.
The Premier Étage and Sortie. The Escalier d’Honneur of the hôtel particulier guides guests to the first floor. Here, in the Salon de Musique, the Re{form} Zara Vol. 1 campaign imagery photographed by Steven Meisel flickers across the walls in shifting projections, creating a temporal dreamscape of image, light and movement. The room leads to the Appartement de Monsieur and the Appartement de Madame, where the Re{form} Zara collection is presented within a re{form}ed haute couture salon environment. The space becomes inverted, as though the set itself has come apart to reveal the structures, surfaces and mechanisms normally hidden around it. Inhabited by 3D-printed muse mannequins, slanted walls and exposed construction collapse the distinction between front and back, illusion and apparatus.
An adjacent Cabinet des Accessoires leads to the Galerie, where shoes and the emblematic Tri-Chic bag of the Re{form} Zara collection are exhibited in vitrines, one left shattered and void like the aftermath of a museum heist. Following their visit, guests return to the courtyard, where they are invited to collect a bouquet of flowers from the florist and enjoy a drink in the café.
