The Zara Revolution

Alright, I'll come clean and declare why my closet is full of nothing but Zara. 

As far as I can recall,  when I was sixteen, the coolest girls at school did not hang out at a particular club or bar or even Starbucks, but at a particular Zara in the heart of the shopping district. And I did my best to hang out there whenever possible, even if just to people-gaze, be seen and try to be cool. It was also at this Zara where I was talent scouted to be a model. 

The thing is at sixteen, Zara is the closest a teenage girl gets to high fashion. No, how could we even dare set foot into Chanel with those dirty converse sneakers? Instead, we get our fashion fix from Zara. And you see, in Asia where I grew up, Zara is actually relatively 'luxe' charging higher prices than most local retailers. Back then, Zara was the cool girls' club. 

But fast forward a decade, Zara is still cool girls' club and even more so to me now that I know about its history and business model. Bringing in 70% of revenue for Inditex (its parent company, a Spanish conglomerate that owns Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull And Bear and Stradivarius among others), Zara has come a long way from its humble Galician origins to pioneer the revolution called 'fast fashion'. 

The concept? Bringing catwalk styles to the masses at breathtaking speeds and affordable prices. Zara's control over the supply chain, producing more than 50% of its clothes in-house in its factories in Spain, means it can bring designs from paper to the shop front in something like two weeks. This low lead time gives Zara immense flexibility to kick back, relax and check out market reception to trends set by the high fashion crowd before acting. And even if they got it wrong, Zara's in-store product managers give daily feedback on which items are selling well and it takes just a couple of weeks to react to this. Further, Zara's aversion to advertising means savings are passed on to its consumers. Money is also spent instead on prime store locations, window displays and giving the consumer an experience of shopping cheap amid luxury interiors. 

The concept is brilliant except for one thing - the disapproving scoff I receive from the fashion-forward when I used to proclaim Zara as my favourite brand. Silly, how can Zara be the least bit inspiring when all it does is copy what other designers produce? So religiously it copies that it is often accused of piracy! And the scoff soon sobers into a distinct frown as I am labelled a 'fashion victim' dressed head to toe in Zara. Really? 

While I empathise with the distress Zara is causing high fashion, as a consumer, I think that Zara is the best thing that happened. It has given consumers the ability to access styles once exclusive to the runway and of having twenty different such catwalk looks to boot every season instead of saving up for that one luxury item that you feel compelled to wear ten times over. And if you really wanted to avoid looking like a 'fashion victim', then who's to say you cannot mix and match Zara with Chloe and Chanel? Arguably, one might even go as far as to say that by democratizing fashion, Zara has made the world a more fashionable place. But I fear I might receive more than a scoff and frown if I went down this route. So for now, let's just say that I see no problem with having those uncountable Zara labels fill my closet - they are no skeletons and I am happy to be wearing them.