From the Duchess of Cambridge and Samantha Cameron to Mary Berry and Coleen Rooney, Zara is now everyone who is anyone's favourite high-street fashion label
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. 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). Cos and Whistles would be punching well above their retail square footage. 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.
Zara has become everyone's favourite fast fashion hit, and the watercooler fashion name to drop. These days, it provides a rich seam of instant small talk between women who like clothes, crossing boundaries of age, class and style. The Duchess of Cambridge wore a blue Zara dress the day after wearing McQueen for her wedding. Coleen Rooney mixes Zara with her designer wardrobe. Mary Berry (77) and Selena Gomez (20) have both worn Zara on TV recently. Samantha Cameron wears Zara to Conservative party conference; the Saturdays wear Zara to go clubbing.
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. It was "super-chic and on-trend, and it cost only £39.99. 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. There were only 20 of us around the table and I was obviously – cringingly – seated next to my twins."
The Zara-twin moment has become a frequent fashion week banana skin. 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".
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. 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. First, the store was among the first on the high street to master production of the new structured jackets at an affordable price. 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.
But 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. Zara has a unique design model, carefully calibrated to be responsive to what the customer is buying in store. Every single garment on sale in Zara is designed by a 350-strong team at its parent company, Inditex, based in La Coruña, Spain. Between them, they produce more than 18,000 creations a year, from shoes to sweaters, from T-shirts to coats. Although some pieces are manufactured in Morocco or China, most are made in Spain, a proximity that allows for the fastest possible turnaround time.
"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. "Zara reacts directly to the customers' tastes for specific trends created by the in-house team. This is the real inspiration for the design team: the choices that everyday customers take in the stores."
Zara's secret weapon is the way in which information harvested on the shopfloor is put to use. If a deep V-neck sweater is selling better than a scooped one, the design team will set to work producing variations on the V-neck. Sales of these will be monitored, and the most successful produced in quantity. "This information reaches the design team, which reacts always with only one thing in mind: what the customer is really wanting. They must be in the skin of the customer. All the organisation is structured towards this aim."
If Echevarria is bullish to the point of evangelism about his business model, the statistics back him up: last year, Zara posted profits of £1.3bn. Amancio Ortega, Inditex's owner, recently leapfrogged Warren Buffett to become the fifth richest man in the world.
Zara's newest and smartest London store, facing the gigantic Marks & Spencer flagship at Marble Arch, is a notably different shopping experience from any of its Oxford Street competitors. The music is quiet and anonymous. There are few images of models wearing the clothes; instead, there are endless mirrors. The atmosphere is less about a social experience and more akin to being inside an enormous, upmarket walk-in wardrobe. It is the perfect environment for a store such as Zara, whose success is built on understanding the shopping impulses of the customer. An "intimate environment in which women are encouraged to assemble their own outfits" is how Inditex describes the new store. On a weekday afternoon, the customers are mostly women shopping alone, although a few are with friends or grown-up daughters. There are mums in parkas pushing sleeping toddlers in buggies, and women in suits with one eye on the time. A woman with a taupe-coloured Céline handbag is browsing next to one clutching two Primark carriers.
Zara's lofty insistence that it does not follow the catwalk is not entirely borne out by the shopfloor. Only the day before, I was admiring photos of the houndstooth check separates designed by Raf Simons for the Christian Dior pre-fall collection, and here, by remarkable coincidence, are a pair of houndstooth cropped trousers (£39.99). An abundance of thick black-and-white striped pieces closely echoes the look seen on the Marc Jacobs catwalk; a black cocktail dress with a stiffened waterfall ruffle is a striking reminder of the current Givenchy collection. A press officer for a prestigious Parisian fashion house told me, on strict condition of anonymity, that she is always pleased when Zara stocks variations on her brand's collection, because even at a discount she can't always afford the real thing – and Zara, she says, "even fools people in Paris".
For key looks, Zara will sell multiple variations on a theme. For instance, I find myself looking at a rack of blazers, in panels of matt black and shiny black viscose. Some have subtle textured navy panels, some have piped edges. Some have flat collars, or notched lapels; some have satin tuxedo detailing. Not since the days of visiting the dressmaker have women's individual preferences been so well catered for at mass market level. In recognising these small differences, Zara flatters the customer's taste. And choice is a smart selling tactic: after flicking through the racks for a few minutes, I realise I have stopped wondering if I should try on a jacket and started wondering which jacket I should try on. (For the record, I bought the one with navy panels. In three outings, it has racked up compliments in double figures.)
There is, of course, a good deal of what I would nontechnically describe as tat. A black lace dress that is cheap and flammable; a street market-esque printed T-shirt. Nicola Rose won't touch the trousers, because "the fabrics just don't work for me. I am very particular about wools and cottons." And the size range can be narrow. Lily Russo says, "I am a size 12 and sometimes a 'large' skirt or trousers doesn't fit. My sister is a size 16 and it would be great if they catered for that size also."
A week and a half later, I make a return trip to Zara. The wide monochrome stripes that dominated the first floor last time have been superseded by abbreviated slim trousers, boyish blazers, silky blouses: a look that closely echoes Hedi Slimane's first collection for Saint Laurent, which recently arrived half a mile away on Bond Street. My navy-panelled blazer has vanished, and I am instantly gratified that I bought it on first sight. (Zara shoppers learn this lesson fast, which helps swell coffers.)
For a generation who have grown used to grazing on fast fashion like hummingbirds on sugar, Zara is addictive. I popped in only to have a quick scout; five minutes later, I'm back in the changing rooms. I'm hooked. Aren't we all?