For the longest time, the space between high street and luxury fashion was miles apart. But now, for the past couple of years, that gap has narrowed closer and closer to collapsing with each other. The latest project to narrow the space this time comes from Zara, who just announced a two-year creative partnership with British designer John Galliano.
From Dior to Maison Margiela and now, Zara, Galliano will tap into Zara’s ‘archives,’ deconstructing and reconstructing them into a series of seasonal collections. It is a partnership no one in the fashion space saw coming. Especially since this will mark Galliano’s return to fashion after his exit from Maison Margiela back in 2024. According to Zara, the collection resulting from this partnership is set to be guided by Galliano’s couture process. It sets up a new stage for fashion to be explored, allowing Galliano to reach a new audience.
Initially, luxury fashion and high street fashion targeted two separate audiences. For the high street fashion industry in particular, fashion came with references to visual codes of luxury but not with an actual designer in place, shaping a vision. This slowly began to change once high street brands like H&M decided to collaborate with designers, offering the best of both worlds—a designer’s vision in a high street brand budget. This attributed influence, which further pushed mass retail to set up its own creative identity. For H&M, we saw that identity in motion last season as the brand showcased its AW25 collection at London Fashion Week. Zara’s partnership signals a similar trajectory.
For high street fashion, it’s a natural progression. After the boom of online shopping, consumer appetite for new clothes reached unprecedented levels, albeit dangerous for industry workers and the environment. But with this consumption, we’re seeing how norms in the fashion industry are slowly being broken. Opposing trends have begun to occur simultaneously, different styles and forms of fashion are beginning to exist in the same field, and now, after Dior’s AW26 show, seasons are beginning to blend into one another. The same can be said for the current market, where luxury fashion can now be attained by the average folk through high street collaborations.
Time will tell if this will be the future of fashion. But as the present is anything to go by, this new positioning of high street brands looking inwards might become the market’s next foray. And it all begins with Zara’s archives.
