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Spanish retailer Zara has now come under fire after a recent advertising campaign allegedly featuring bodies and statues with missing limbs surrounded by rubble sparked widespread criticism online.
Disclaimer: This article contains references to the Israel-Palestine conflict and has images that may be disturbing to some. Discretion is advised.
The graphic imagery that many opined was reminiscent of the destruction in Gaza amid the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict showed model Kristen McMenamy posing with mannequins wrapped in white cloth and plastic that widely resembled a dead body.
In response to the campaign, social media users are urging people to boycott Zara, the wealthiest clothing retailer in the world, founded by Amancio Ortega.
Zara founder Amancio Ortega is a Spanish businessman and the 14th wealthiest person in the world
Amancio Ortega, who was born in Leon, Spain, is the 14th wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $75 billion. Ortega, 87, ventured into a career in fashion in his teens working at a men's shirt store in A Coruña, before starting a small bathrobe workshop together with his first wife, Rosalía Mera, and his brothers in 1963.
After starting his first textile factory, Confecciones GOA, in 1972, he founded the first Zara store in 1975 in Coruña.
Per multiple reports, Amancio Ortega leads a private life and is infamous for never giving a press interview. In light of a recent scandal where an advertising campaign was allegedly vastly equated to deriding the destruction in Gaza, Ortega is now facing widespread criticism online.
While the clothing company defended the campaign, titled “The Jacket,” saying it was reflective of the garment's versatility, social media users refused to buy into the defense.
Palestinian artist Hazem Harb expressed his dismay on Instagram, calling for the clothing store's boycott, stating that using unsettling imagery depicting death and destruction is insidious and suggests complicity amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Several people believe that the campaign was a deliberate creative choice aimed at mocking the suffering of Palestinians.
Zara's controversial campaign history explored amid recent calls for boycott
This isn’t the first time the Spanish retailer has come under scrutiny for insensitive imagery on its clothing. Ortega's clothing store has previously faced calls for boycott over seemingly anti-semitic design choices.
Ortega and his company had previously been accused of propagating anti-semitism after the clothing store debuted a pair of children’s pajamas that resembled Holocaust concentration camp uniforms in 2015. The incident followed another major questionable design choice where the clothing giant released a line of purses with swastikas in 2007.
In 2015, a former in-house counsel for Zara filed a $40 million discrimination suit against Zara's parent company, Inditex, alleging he was fired because he's Jewish, American and gay. In the lawsuit, the lawyer accused Amancio Ortega of setting the tone from the top.
The Jewish lawyer who allegedly kept his religion a secret alleged that the CEO of Zara's American business, a close confidant of Ortega, allegedly referred to the retail chain's Jewish landlords as "los judios" or "the Jews."
Zara head designer under fire amid Gaza genocide campaign controversy
The recent boycott calls against the retailer accused of supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine, are gaining steam after social media users unearthed old inflammatory texts sent to a male Palestinian model by the retailer’s head designer, Vanessa Perilman, in 2021. Part of the text allegedly read:
"Maybe if your people were educated, then they wouldn't blow up hospitals and schools that Israel helped to pay for in Gaza," she said.
In response to the public outcry, the clothing giant deleted a few images from the social media campaign but has not issued a response or statement regarding the controversy.
