For each season’s collection, Zara’s professional creative team focuses on a certain “pillar” in the wardrobe, and uses their knowledge and skills to meticulously create six new presentation designs for this type of clothing. Each piece must retain its original essence but also push the traditional boundaries of its expression. The ZARA ATELIER series is a practice that pursues focused design, aiming to fully demonstrate Zara’s superb creativity and manufacturing capabilities, giving a regular garment six new interpretations while exploring various possibilities for clothing.
This season ZARA ATELIER’s experimental theme in creating uniqueness is the jacket. Photographed by photographer Tim Walker for Zara, model Kristen McMenamy serves as the model, interpreting a series of eye-catching fashion items – each piece is like a prism, revealing and amplifying the unique mood and style attitude of the wearer .
1: Extraordinary Jacket
Tracing the shape and craftsmanship of men’s tailoring in the 20th century, inspiring and reshaping it to create a powerful unisex piece for women in the 21st century. The Atelier team retains the classic tailoring silhouette that symbolizes prestige, and completely changes traditional tailoring by combining a variety of fabrics. The extraordinary jacket is made from a patchwork of materials including gray herringbone wool, navy flannel, grey-black dry wool, charcoal gray pinstripe wool and gray flannel, while the silhouettes are often seen only until the cut is complete. Depicted in white “lining” stitching.
2: Hug Jacket
Atelier’s revolutionary body jacket combines comfort, compatibility and versatility. Made from pure gray wool, the soft material hugs your curves like a second skin. The rounded shoulders and hips are designed to outline a feminine silhouette, while the tightening effect of the threaded waist section further highlights the sleek visual expression. The jacket has knitted elements starting from the shoulders, and the patterned long sleeves with a silhouette are also made of similar wool materials.
3: Timeless Jacket
It is a multifaceted work that combines history and modernity, pattern and structure, masculinity and femininity. This jacket is inspired by the classic ivory wool frock coat that was the epitome of male clothing in the 18th century. The surface of the garment is embellished with white raw-edged silk chiffon, to which vintage feminine embroidery embellished with blue beading is added. Underneath the coat is a bolero-shaped waistcoat with soft embroidery in pink and peach. The inner layer is a long vest with military-style metal buttons, and blue striped lining fabric is also added to the collar. Although sold as one product, the Timeless Jacket can be broken down into three pieces. It is full of power and personality, allowing the wearer to express a unique style that is not bound by current trends.
4: Poet’s Jacket
This is an experiment with contrasting colors, trying to express a new romantic harmony. The poet’s jacket has its own language. It’s centered around a broad-shouldered black jacket in lightweight wool, fastened with a delicate cotton gauze ribbon – punctuated by delicate embellishments, all in white. First, a three-dimensional floral lace extends from the right lapel of the garment, painting a touch of poetry; above this, a classic Flemish-style cotton square family embroidery patch extends from the back and covers the collar. Under the suit, layered organza pleats hang down from the cuffs and complement the collar. The asymmetrical pleated skirt creates a clever collision with the neat tailoring of the hem.
5: Siren Jacket
Siren changes the traditional role of the jacket in the wardrobe, transforming it into a sensual and glamorous outfit. To achieve this transformation, this smartly tailored piece is designed to be worn “inside out”, creating a lapel-style open back and a high collar-front design. The two cutouts at the shoulders are a playful twist on the traditional shoulder structure of the jacket. This jacket is slim-fitting from the waist down and hugs the hips. Its graceful silhouette can be worn in daily life or worn as a miniskirt to show off its unique edge. Retaining the formality and seriousness of tailoring but incorporating distinctly feminine elements, the siren jacket’s mission is to seduce.
6. Bohemian jacket
A complete refusal to conform to the rules, “Uninhibited” is a jacket designed for those proud souls who resist being defined. From top to bottom, the jacket takes the form of a carefully tailored iconic leather-cut motorcycle jacket, adding delicate chains and circular perforations to the collar, while the body is embellished with blocky black tulle. Then use tough metal hardware to embellish it. Then, there was a dramatic change: at the waist “hem”, the material transitioned from leather to a black viscose hem, and it seemed like another customized jacket was worn underneath. The bohemian jacket creates a double dimension in its adjacency, presenting a seemingly contradictory visual effect.
The ZARA ATELIER series will be on sale on the official website and some selected stores on December 7, 2023.
