Zara Studio Spring 2022 Ad Campaign

Review of Zara ‘Studio’ Spring 2022 Ad Campaign by Chief Creative Officer Fabien Baron of Baron & Baron and Creative Director Christophe Derigon with Photographer Steven Meisel with models Quinn Mora, Rianne Van Rompaey, Lina Zhang, Marie Sophie Wilson, Tess McMillan, Amar Akway, Jessica Stam, Georgia Palmer and Edie Campbell

Zara balances strength and delicacy in the new campaign for its latest Studio collection. The focused and powerful Spring 2022 campaign boasts creative direction from Fabien Baron and photography by Steven Meisel, two of fashion’s leading image makers who have done excellent work for Zara recently in expanding and deepening the brand’s narrative possibilities.

Featuring a global cast of inspiring women, the campaign is a celebration of pan-feminine power and allure that places its wearer first. The cast consists of Quinn Mora, Rianne Van Rompaey, Lina Zhang, Marie Sophie Wilson, Tess McMillan, Amar Akway, Jessica Stam, Georgia Palmer and Edie Campbell.

Created by stylist (and current Ports 1961 creative director) Karl Templer together with Zara’s in-house design team, the Studio collection combines decorative expression with functional intent. Beauty and romance are central to the season’s thesis: paisley, lace, ruffle, broderie anglaise, chiffon, and tulle are blended across volumized shoulders, nipped waists, and full skirts that emanate the softness of feminine archetypes. Meanwhile, hard-edged details in tailoring, militaria, belting, bodicing, and hardware combine to subvert and reenergize those archetypes for a strong modern woman.

Meisel’s photographs situate his subjects amid an abstracted, all-white table setting. The intentionally minimal props and set pieces of fruits – grapes, pomegranates, and apples – subtly suggest a mood of fullness and decadence, with the classical allusions they suggest carrying particular weight in furthering the collection’s theme of quietly subverted femininity.

The accompanying video blends painting, digital art, and film to create an artistically illuminated moving version of the photographs, lending a further sense of fantasy and whimsy to their already strong mood. The resulting piece lands somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and an all-woman version of the Garden of Eden – one where partaking of the forbidden fruit is encouraged.

The campaign is another great chapter in Zara’s push for creative excellence in their ad campaigns that has been unfolding over the last couple years, precisely nailing a delicate mood that harmoniously expands and explores the world suggested by the collection. The Studio collection represents the most high-level work the brand has to offer in terms of intentional design and material selection, and such a collection deserves an appropriately sophisticated and well-crafted campaign. Baron and Meisel do not at all disappoint.