"Zara reacts directly to the customers' tastes for specific trends created by the in-house team. "This fashion-creating cycle has nothing to do with the catwalk cycles, which show very different proposals of trends several months in advance," Jesus Echevarria, Zara's communications director, tells me. ![]() Although some pieces are manufactured in Morocco or China, most are made in Spain, a proximity that allows for the fastest possible turnaround time. Between them, they produce more than 18,000 creations a year, from shoes to sweaters, from T-shirts to coats. Every single garment on sale in Zara is designed by a 350-strong team at its parent company, Inditex, based in La Coruña, Spain. Zara has a unique design model, carefully calibrated to be responsive to what the customer is buying in store. Lily Russo, shopping editor of Grazia, pinpoints the season "when Balmain first sent models down the catwalk with sharp-shouldered rock chick blazers" as the moment Zara got a grip on the fashion zeitgeist.īut there is a second and more fundamental reason the current mood of fashion – in which our wardrobes are steered by the chic, understated, piece-by-piece minimalism pioneered by Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo at Céline – has benefited Zara. ![]() First, the store was among the first on the high street to master production of the new structured jackets at an affordable price. A gradual tidal pull away from the stand-alone trophy dress and towards a wardrobe based on jackets, blouses, trousers and skirts worked in Zara's favour for two reasons. Zara's ascendancy to fashion's top table began towards the end of the last decade, as fashion changed direction away from dresses and towards separates. Nicola Rose, fashion director of Red magazine (most recent Zara purchases: cream cable-knit sweater with back zip, black kitten heels, sweat top), has a wardrobe stocked with Marni and Miu Miu, but says, "All the fashion insiders top up their wardrobe with something from Zara." Her colleague Emily Gegg, Red's executive fashion director (most recent purchase: black sleeveless blazer), calls Zara "the fashion industry's staple". The Zara-twin moment has become a frequent fashion week banana skin. There were only 20 of us around the table and I was obviously – cringingly – seated next to my twins." But my smugness was soon dented when a French journo arrived wearing the exact same thing, and then an Italian PR in the same blouse in a different colourway. It was "super-chic and on-trend, and it cost only £39.99. Last month, invited to a smart industry dinner during the Paris haute couture shows, Grazia's senior fashion features editor, Katherine Ormerod, chose from her packed wardrobe her most recent trophy purchase: a striking, broad-striped monochrome Zara blouse. Samantha Cameron wears Zara to Conservative party conference the Saturdays wear Zara to go clubbing. ![]() Mary Berry (77) and Selena Gomez (20) have both worn Zara on TV recently. ![]() Coleen Rooney mixes Zara with her designer wardrobe. The Duchess of Cambridge wore a blue Zara dress the day after wearing McQueen for her wedding. These days, it provides a rich seam of instant small talk between women who like clothes, crossing boundaries of age, class and style. Zara has become everyone's favourite fast fashion hit, and the watercooler fashion name to drop. But the name you'd find over and over again, from the front row to the standing section, in shoes and tailored jackets, in subtle navies and greys as well as this season's lemon sherbet bright? Zara. Cos and Whistles would be punching well above their retail square footage. Topshop would be well represented, naturally, especially the tuxedo trousers, and the so-on-trend dungarees, and the JW Anderson knits (the high-street fashionista's answer to a Jonny Saunders). Say you were to walk into a London fashion week catwalk show today and order everyone to undress (this is hypothetical, by the way – please don't), an inventory of which high-street label is most worn by the fashionables would, I suspect, surprise many.
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