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Zara Owner Inditex Says Autumn Sales Stronger After First-Half Growth Slowdown 

A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
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Zara Owner Inditex Says Autumn Sales Stronger After First-Half Growth Slowdown 

A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)

Zara owner Inditex reported on Wednesday stronger recent sales of its first autumn-winter collections after posting a slowdown in sales growth in the first half of the year that was in line with analysts' expectations.

The fashion giant said its sales between Aug. 1 and Sept. 8 saw an 11% boost in constant currency compared with a year ago. In the first half, sales growth had slowed to 7.2% from 13.5% in the same period the prior year.

The world's biggest listed fashion retailer reported a 10% rise in first-half profit amid tougher times for fashion retailers in Europe, partly due to a wet and cold June in its biggest market, Spain. Despite those headwinds, Inditex posted net income of 2.8 billion euros ($3.09 billion) and sales of 18.1 billion euros in its first half ending in July.

Analysts polled by LSEG had expected a profit of 2.77 billion euros based on 18 billion euros in sales.

The company reported a gross margin of 58.3% for the period. Analysts from HSBC, RBC, JPMorgan and Bestinver had forecast Zara's sales growth would rebound into the double digits in the first five weeks of its third quarter beginning in August after the poor weather in June dashed Zara's initial expectations of a bumper second quarter.

The fashion company has fought to stay ahead of competitors such as H&M and fast-growing Chinese rival Shein by investing in logistics and technology to deliver fashion trends faster and making an effort to minimize price increases on everyday items.

Zara hiked prices more slowly than in the past in the second quarter and less than H&M in the United States, its second-biggest market, according to retail analytics firm EDITED.

Prices for women's jeans at Zara were 2% higher than a year ago, while the average price of jeans at H&M increased by 8%, EDITED added.

H&M said June sales were likely to fall 6% in local currencies versus a year earlier, partly due to worse weather in many markets, while the wet weather in Britain also hit summer sales at Primark.

"I don't look at stocks with a short-term horizon. (On) a three-to-five year view, Inditex is the best fashion retailer in the whole brick-and-mortar space, as well as online," said fund manager Vera Diehl of Union Investment, who considers Inditex's gap with H&M and Shein has widened.

"The company takes long-term strategic decisions," Diehl added. Inditex said Zara will offer live shopping broadcasts in key markets such as Spain, the US, France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Canada in the coming weeks, following the format's launch in the Chinese market in November 2023.

Zara's parent company, which also owns the Pull&Bear, Bershka and Massimo Duti brands, is expanding in the US, enlarging and relocating stores and investing 900 million euros per year through 2025 on new logistics centers in Spain and the Netherlands.

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Fashion

Invited to the Met Gala, Nothing to Wear? Hint: Find Yourself a ‘Superfine’ Suit

Designs by Jacques Agbobly, left, and Jeffrey Banks, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," appear in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP)
Designs by Jacques Agbobly, left, and Jeffrey Banks, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," appear in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP)
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Invited to the Met Gala, Nothing to Wear? Hint: Find Yourself a ‘Superfine’ Suit

Designs by Jacques Agbobly, left, and Jeffrey Banks, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," appear in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP)
Designs by Jacques Agbobly, left, and Jeffrey Banks, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," appear in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP)

What’s in a suit?

According to curators busy prepping the newest Met Gala exhibit, a whole lot more than tailoring: history, culture, identity, power and, most of all, self-expression.

“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” this year’s spring show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, will be launched as usual by the star-packed Met Gala a few nights earlier, on May 5. It’s the first Met show to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years to have a menswear theme.

As always, the exhibit inspires the gala dress code, and this year’s — “Tailored For You” — makes clear that guests are invited to be as creative as possible within the framework of classic tailoring.

In other words, expect a lot of great suits.

“Everything from Savile Row to a track suit,” quipped guest curator Monica L. Miller, a Barnard College professor of Africana studies, considering the versatility of a suit. She sat recently in a conference room at the Met with photos and notes plastered on the walls. She was in the middle of writing descriptive labels for the more than 200 items in the show — an exhaustive (and exhausting) task.

The suit, Miller said, “represents so many things.” And tailoring, she added, is a very intimate process.

“It’s not just about getting a suit that fits you physically,” Miller said, “but, what do you want to express that night?

It was Miller’s 2009 book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” that inspired the show and led Andrew Bolton, curator of all the blockbuster Costume Institute shows, to bring her in as guest curator. The show uses dandyism as a lens through which to explore the formation of Black style over the years.

“Dandyism was about pushing boundaries,” Miller said.

Behind her, a section of wall was devoted to each of the 12 themes that divide the exhibit: Ownership, presence, distinction, disguise, freedom, champion, respectability, jook, heritage, beauty, cool and cosmopolitanism.

The early sections will begin with the 18th century and focus more on historical artifacts, with later sections looking at the 20th century and beyond. In addition, each section will begin with historic garments, accessories or photographs, and end with contemporary fashion.

Getting the first look at all this, on the traditional first Monday in May, will be a high-powered crowd from the worlds of entertainment, fashion, sports and beyond. Gala co-chairs this year are musician-designer Pharrell Williams, Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton, actor Colman Domingo and rapper A$AP Rocky; NBA superstar LeBron James is honorary chair.

If that weren't enough star power, this year, there's an additional host committee with athletes like Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens, Hollywood figures like Spike Lee and Ayo Edebiri, musicians like Janelle Monáe and André 3000, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and other artists, playwrights and fashion figures.

They and other guests will be free to tour the exhibit before the lavish dinner begins. This year, exquisitely tailored celebrities will examine other examples of exquisite tailoring — as well as historical artifacts like a horse jockey uniform worn between 1830 and 1840.

In an installation room late last month, a museum staffer worked painstakingly on restoring those jockey trousers, a pin cushion at the ready. Near her, two items were already hanging on mannequins. One was a classic Jeffrey Banks suit from 1987, a double-breasted jacket and trousers paired with a dapper plaid wool coat, the ensemble finished off with a light pink tie.

“See how the coat and suit play off each other,” noted Miller.

Next to it was a very different kind of suit — a denim jacket and trousers embellished throughout with beads — by a far less widely known designer: Jacques Agbobly, whose Brooklyn-based label aims to promote Black, queer and immigrant narratives as well as his own Togolese heritage.

The show makes a point, Miller said, of highlighting designers who are well known and others who are not, including some from the past who are anonymous. It will veer across not only history but also class, showing garments worn by people in all economic categories.

Because there are not many existing garments worn or created by Black Americans before the latter part of the 19th century, Miller said, the early part of the show fills out the story with objects like paintings, prints, some decorative arts, film and photography.

Among the novelty items: The “respectability” section includes civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois’ receipts for laundry and tailoring. “He’d go to Paris and London, he would visit tailors and have suits made there,” she said.

And the “jook” section includes a film clip of the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers — who in 1943's “Stormy Weather” produced one of the most astounding dance numbers ever to appear on film.

“We wanted to show people moving in the clothes,” Miller explained. “A fashion exhibit is frustrating because you don't see people in the clothes.”

Miller wondered aloud whether there might be a stretch material in the pair’s tuxedos (they perform multiple splits coming down a staircase). She also noted that the tuxedo, like the suit in general, is a garment that cuts across social categories. “If you are at a formal event the people serving are also in tuxedos, and sometimes the entertainment is in tuxedos, too,” she said.

“It's a conversation about class and gender.”

The exhibit opens to the public on May 10 and runs through Oct. 26.