Samuel Ross begins a new chapter with Zara: ‘Clothes give you the power to transform’

It takes grace to judge the right moment to leave a party. In February 2024, Samuel Ross made the decision to step away from his cult menswear label A-Cold-Wall*, departing after a decade of radical architecturally inspired collections, artistic partnerships and several awards. ‘There comes a moment where you have to liberate yourself to be able to fulfill your pursuits or your eudaimonia,’ he says of the move, appearing on the screen in a simple black long-sleeve, the sleek Japanese woodwork of his east London studio providing a pleasing backdrop. ‘There's so much more time now; to think, research, read and scribe my thoughts before I go into execution. There’s so much more time to observe the world.’

Despite the departure, it’s hardly been a year of rest and relaxation for the polymath. Ross has been devoting his energy to SR_A, the multidisciplinary studio where he and his team have been blurring the lines between art, furniture, industrial design and garment production since 2019. To give a sense of how varied the studio’s efforts are, recent projects have included a solo display at White Cube gallery in London, furniture at Friedman Benda in New York, and bathroom fittings for American manufacturer Kohler. One, perhaps unexpected, project the studio has been planning over the past 12 months is a multi-seasonal partnership with Zara. Unlike anything the retailer has embarked upon before, the holistic collaboration will span not just shoppable items like clothing and homeware, but experiential spaces, installations and events. It launches this week with a presentation of raw, athletic menswear during Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025.

SR_A engineered by Zara and Samuel Ross

Designers teaming up with such retail behemoths is nothing new, but Ross wanted the partnership to be intentional and reflective of a new stage in his career, where he says he’s creating with a greater consciousness of the world today. ‘We've had enough time on the SR_A side to really just observe what's been happening across the fashion sector,’ he explains. ‘It gives you a really clear view of where you can try to solve some problems. At SR_A, our mission is to work with artisans and ateliers, to preserve means of craft and production and family legacies. On the other side of the coin, it’s about democracy and reach and being able to dissolve barriers to entry. This is something that I’ve said for quite some time but it is a huge sticking point for me. To do that, you need to find the right partners to work with, and Zara is enabling us to dissolve those barriers.’

While Ross’ designs at ACW* brought a cold, brutalist architecture to the body, he’s now making clothes that have a softer, organic ease to them. ‘It's much more about how the clothes make the wearer feel, versus the clothes wearing the wearer,’ he explains. ‘I think that a maturity has come about.’

For Zara, Ross was thinking about moving between nature and urban spaces, resulting in a collection where simple athletic shapes in a palette of muted moss, indigo and clay tones are realised with clever points of interest. Drawing inspiration from Japanese design and artefacts of the ancient world, garments ‘cleave, fold and shroud the body’ to form billowing silhouettes that have a sense of protection or cocooning. ‘It’s quite far away from my earlier work in high technical, high-gloss materials,’ he says. ‘It’s about delivering a feeling and an emotion without sacrificing function.’

Ross has a particular gift for speaking about his work, explaining the personal, societal and technical reasoning behind his designs with a poetic kind of precision. For this release, the designer was thinking about a duality; how clothing can embellish us or allow us to become invisible. ‘We've been discussing producing garments that allow you to disappear,’ he says. ‘To move through society and cityscapes silently. I think that's a real focus on respite and exhale. There are certain days we all just want to go about quietly and silently and not be seen, and there are other days where we want to personify who we are through clothes. That is really the power of fashion, is that it gives you the ability to transform.’

Community has long been a pillar of Ross’ practice, from early days as Virgil Abloh’s design assistant to artistic collaboration with figures like Kerry James Marshall, and more widely through his work at the Black British Artist Grants Programme, which has provided 50 artists with funding while connecting an uprising generation of talent to institutions. This release with Zara sees him bring several close friends and creative forces into the fold, including Gabriel Moses, who shot the campaign; Luka Sabbat, who stars in the visuals; and Benji B, who has created soundscapes for the Paris launch.

‘Over time, it's really a sense of collaboration, and that focus on being able to speak to multiple generations through multiple artists is really the key to this,’ he says. ‘It isn't just my view of my vision, this is a collective view and a collective vision.’

At the end of the call, Ross says he has to rush across town to visit a site for a large-scale permanent installation he has in the works. Later, he’ll be lacquering a Louis Vuitton mahogany crate he made for Virgil Abloh before he died, the varnish for which made an exciting arrival half-way through our interview. In a life post-ACW*, Ross seems energised by the space and time to work in a multitude of directions, although he says his love for making clothes will never go.

‘My affinity to clothes goes right back to me being a shop boy in a sportswear store in Northampton at the age of 12,’ he says. ‘A relationship with communicating through clothes will never go. What I'm quite pleased by, is that in each chapter of life, I’ve been able to present a different perspective on how clothes can make us feel.’

SR_A engineered by Zara and Samuel Ross Atelier: Edition 1 on 6 February 2025

zara.com