Stefano Pilati is the designer’s designer, his tenures at Yves Saint Laurent (2004-2012) and Zegna (2014-2016) the stuff of fashion lore – an exercise in silhouette and fabrication, they captured a languid, sensual glamour that he continues to hone at his own genderless, seasonless Berlin-based label, Random Identities. ‘Silhouettes are essential,' he said in a recent Instagram post looking back on his A/W 2006 collection for Yves Saint Laurent (his account has been transformed into a retrospective of sorts, cataloguing his past collections). ‘My concept has always been that fashion – therefore, clothes – is created to serve the body.’
Now, he brings his design philosophy to an altogether more wide-reaching project: a capsule collection of clothing for Spanish retailer Zara. It continues the brand’s string of high-profile collaborations in recent months, including with the hairstylist Guido Palau and photographer Steven Meisel. Rooted in a long-running relationship between Inditex chairperson Marta Ortega (Inditex is the clothing group that owns Zara), the new collection, says Pilati, serves as a ‘friendship anniversary’ for the pair, who met nine years ago. On her part, Ortega said that the decision largely came from her admiration for Pilati’s own personal sense of style, which inspires the collection.
