Zara is here, as this video of somewhat hysterical shoppers in Sydney today shows. Whether you’re hysterical, trepidatious or completely ignorant, there is little doubt the arrival of Spanish clothing Zara is about to alter the fabric of our style landscape.
Here’s the low-down: Catering to men, women and children, Zara produces, on average, 11,000 distinct items of clothing distributed in 70 countries each year. As the flagship brand of the Inditex group, Zara and its sibling brands boast 5,004 stores with a global turnover of $12.5 billion. Heck, even that sartorial hotspot Kazakhstan now boasts its own Zara outlet.
But, what really marks Zara as an oddity, a stunningly successful oddity, in the clothing world is the way the brand has dramatically shortened the fashion life cycle. Zara’s commercial dexterity to mimic runway fashion and emerging street trends is largely unparalleled, meaning, new looks can make their way from the sketchpad to store shelves in two weeks flat.
It’s a model that is increasingly being aped by other clothing brands, even those reaching up to luxury end of scale including Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry.
But as we genuflect our way to sartorial nirvana, what Zara’s arrival means is that so-called ‘fast fashion’ has well and truly washed up our shores. It’s a term that refers to high-volume, relatively low cost fashion that is churned through stores and our wardrobes with an ever-greater velocity.
Fast fashion plays perfectly to a curious reversal in sartorial mores that has emerged in the last few years. No longer is wearing a particularly pricey designer label a point of vogueish pride. These days, whispering, “It only cost me $39” as you proudly flaunt your new frock will earn you far greater kudos from the stylistically-discerning than if you’d spent a four-figure sum on a Parisian gem.
But with the main street nascence of fast fashion has come a growing awareness that the price tag on the label is not the real bottom line. In 2008 in the UK, a damning House of Lords report criticised the wastefulness of cheap, mass-produced fashion, labelling the growing throng of bargain chains as “costly and socially unacceptable.”
As we pay less and less for more and more clothes, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the moral queasiness that fast fashion forces us to swallow.
I am currently wearing a dress that cost $10. Was the person who stitched this paid equitably? Were they even an adult? The question I’m left asking is, who paid the price for me to buy a dress that cost about the same as a sandwich?
It’s sorely tempting to ignore the environmental toll of our buying binges. Cotton is a water-intensive crop that needs large amounts of fertiliser to thrive. Synthetic fibres, made from petrochemicals, wreck even more of an ecological impact. Shall we even bother to get into the awesome carbon footprint of the garment trade?
After years of slipping into a global financial funk, is it any wonder we are hungry for a little something sparkly to cheer ourselves up? A quick consumerist hit is an easy, and affordable, high.
There is also an argument that fast fashion brings playfulness and quirk to our wardrobes. With the proliferation of stores peddling the speediest styles, we can play around with the way we express ourselves with an unprecedented level of frivolity.
But, like shovelling a burger into your mouth, fast fashion can leave a sickly aftertaste. It took decades of hoeing into greasy burgers and double-bacon pizzas before someone stopped to consider if a grease-laden diet was doing us damage.
Stuff yourself now I say, because the day is fast approaching when our fashion diet will catch up with us.
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