I've been to Europe a few times before, but nothing prepared me for the overwhelming bigness of NYC, its heady rush, its oddly beckoning yet repelling odor, its vertical push. I don't remember much from that trip, except for feeling small (ok, fine, even smaller than I am) and very, very provincial. It made me want to conquer it, to 'make it there'. Instead when I did come to the US I settled in Boston, NY's smaller, quieter, so much easier cousin and if I proved anything it wasn't the kind of stuff one proves in the Big Apple. That dream will have to remain unfulfilled.
From the haze of that first visit I do remember, however, another first - a shopping spree at Zara. If I'm not mistaken we went to the store in midtown, not far from MOMA. It was a revelation, almost as much as the city that housed the store (sure, the museums weren't that bad either) and I blew whatever savings I had on it. But by the time I moved Stateside Zara dropped off my radar - nothing about it seemed as chic as it needed to be. But now it is back again, big time.
Apparently I'm not the only one tooting Zara's horn - below is a story out of the NYTimes. And while you are reading about the glories of affordable fashion listen to U2, RM's favorite band in high-school (and yet another big thing she introduced me to. I should have put up something from Joshua Tree, but hec, this is a 90s post):
Zara, Where Insiders Look for an Edge
When they’re not tending clients or updating inventory at the Albright Fashion Library, a supplier of fresh-from-the-runway looks to stylists, socialites and film companies, Lindsay Carr and Yael Quint like to poke around the Internet for credible approximations of their favorite high-end labels. Their jobs afford them plenty of chances to beg, borrow or buy at a discount any number of lust-worthy items from the likes of Balenciaga, Givenchy or Céline. But on a recent spring morning, Ms. Carr was turned out top to toe in Zara.
Ms. Quint sat alongside her wearing a filmy top, Céline sandals and a pair of billowing trousers. Their provenance: Zara. “Stylists who visit here are constantly asking, ‘Are you wearing Céline, are you wearing Givenchy?’ “ Ms. Quint said, adding with a hoot, “We like to tell them, ‘No, we’re wearing Zalenciaga, or we’re wearing Zéline.’ ”
If that sounds smug, it may be because Ms. Carr and Ms. Quint are pleased to claim membership in an expanding coterie of fashion insiders — magazine editors, stylists, bloggers and street-style divas — to tap Zara routinely, and repeatedly, for timely, decently priced approximations of the runways’ greatest hits.
Among tastemakers, the zeal is infectious. “We all aspire, regardless of age, height, weight and color, to be the girls on the runway,” said Kristen Henderson, a fashion blogger in Atlanta. “I feel like Zara puts you there.”
It wasn’t always so. Only a couple of years ago, Zara, with its midprice interpretations of runway trends, was a leading purveyor of cheap chic to the budget-conscious crowd, offering well-constructed, moderately stylish wares that, for the most part, steered clear of the cutting edge. A retail division of the Spanish global giant Inditex, with some 1,900 stores in 87 countries, the company does not advertise. Unlike its competition, fast-fashion chains including Topshop and H&M, it has eschewed collaborations with upscale designer labels; nor has it flooded the Internet with a barrage of tweets and social media shout-outs.
Apparently it saw no need. The company, which had close to $15 billion in sales for 2013, does not grant interviews or discuss retail and marketing strategies. Yet in the last 18 to 20 months, it has clearly sought to reposition itself as a fashion front-runner with a definable point of view.
At a time when there are few sweeping upmarket fashion trends, Zara is championing minimalism, noted Jeff Van Sinderen, a senior retail analyst for apparel with B. Riley & Company, a research and investment firm. “Their look is very aspirational, in terms of the brands they are emulating,” he said. “Focusing on clean, spare lines, like those of Jil Sander or Céline, has set them apart.” And, he might have added, turned the chain into an unlikely magnet for fashion progressives.
Not by any stretch a design innovator, Zara has nonetheless passed muster with the style-obsessed. “These days, Zara feels like a fashion brand,” said Hannah Weil, a blogger with the Pop Sugar website, who turns to the store and its website for wardrobe refreshers — “a little crop top,” she said, “or a piece that will give your look a little edge.”
She is part of a wider audience the company has courted, according to Dana Telsey of the Telsey Advisory Group, a stock research firm. “In the past year, they’ve been expanding their customer base toward more influential consumers,” she said. “That they can go up and down the ladder helps them to gain awareness and build market share.
The company relies largely on word of mouth and a high-luster website, introduced in the United States in 2011, to create a hunger for its wares. The site, which vies these days in slick production values and of-the-moment looks with those of many fashion magazines, arrived at a time when any lingering stigma attached to buying copies has all but evaporated, even among the most stubborn designer-label purists.
Segmented into men’s, women’s and children’s offerings, the site includes a separate Studio classification aimed at the vanguard and a Zara Lookbook, a magazine-like feature showcasing the company’s more advanced items, among them a short-sleeve jumpsuit with flared lapels and a double-breasted, gold-button navy blazer (each $139). Offerings with a slightly broader appeal include a stretch-cotton leaf print blazer ($99.90), a floral print calf-length skirt ($79), a fringed imitation-suede top ($69.90) and a modish selection of platform sandals and bucket bags.
The fashion devout are impressed. “Why Can’t Our Closet Be Just Like the Zara Lookbook?” Ms. Weil posted last fall on Pop Sugar. The site is clean and well curated, she elaborated in an interview. “You get a sense that everything goes with everything else.”
Her peers around the country fairly boast of their Zara dependency. “I’m addicted,” Ms. Henderson wrote on her blog, Style with Kirsten Kai. She confided that she scours local Zara outposts once a month, dropping $150 to $300 during each visit. She counts on the store for the leather pieces she covets: shorts, skirts and jackets in particular. “Everything leather that I own that’s not vintage is Zara,” she said.
Zara shares with some magazines and online fashion sites a strategy of enlisting style-world luminaries to boost its hipness quotient. Fashion media stars including Taylor Tomasi Hill, a contributor to the Gwyneth Paltrow blog, Goop, and Amanda Brooks, a former fashion director of Barneys New York, have modeled in its web pages. As pertinent, though Zara declines to confirm it, the company has engaged a handful of influential fashion stylists as “consultants,” to rework or adapt — in a word, copy — the most heat-generating runway looks for its increasingly savvy audience.
To hear from shoppers, its strategy has paid off. “In my office, Zara has become the center of so many conversations,” Ms. Weil said. “Probably because they have stepped up what they’re doing.”
Ms. Henderson voiced a growing consensus. “Whatever is out there in the marketplace, whatever is going on, Zara is right there on point,” she said. “It’s a place where women of all age ranges can shop.”
So ardent is she, one might suspect that Zara had offered incentives to feature the label on her blog. Not so, Ms. Henderson said. Zara would be one of the last brands to reach out to bloggers, she said. The fashion set’s devotion is, she maintained, spontaneous and unsolicited.
Indeed, industry professionals count themselves as among the brand’s chief boosters. “Zara has completely opened up the world to fashion people,” Ms. Quint said. “Stylists who never shopped there before are shopping there now.”
Some unabashedly show off their “gets” at fashion gatherings. “Especially at Fashion Week, there’s that wow factor,” Ms. Weil said. “People are always asking each other, ‘Oh, maybe you’re wearing Céline?’ Zara does that look really well.”
Well enough, in fact, that Céline this year took a radical step, pre-empting retailers’ efforts to “adapt” or “interpret” its much-copied collection by showing images not six months in advance of the season, but just as it is reaching stores. They could have taken lessons from Zara itself, which does not offer previews, captivating even style-sated pros with an element of surprise.
“For me, as a fashion editor, Zara is the only brand I don’t see ahead of time,” said Jade Frampton, the senior market editor at Elle magazine. “It’s the store I shop in. Every time I look around, I’m like, ‘I haven’t seen any of this before.’ ”
The label’s cool factor is catnip to Ms. Frampton, who chose to be photographed in a Zara demi-sheer pleated skirt, a style clearly inspired by the spring runways. “The silhouettes and color selection have gone up, and so has the overall quality of the merchandise.”
Trendiness is appealing to her, but quality is as decisive in determining what she will buy. “At the end of the day, you’re still spending money,” she said. “You don’t want things to fall apart when you get home.”
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