Deconstructing Zara’s strategy

After becoming synonymous with a category, Zara is investing in its brand

Go to Zara.com, and there is a white page with the brand’s Studio Collection only. It’s simple, it’s confident, and it’s modern. Website homepages are not a place for brand narrative; they are shopping destinations that drive us to products as quickly as possible (go to Balenciaga site and you’d be greeted by Crocs mule. Mobile version if the site is even more straightforward as visits are treated with what looks like product detail page. It works).

Click through Studio Collection, and you’d be greeted by impossibly cool-looking sixty year old sporting looks from the Collection. She pulls them off perfectly and makes us first wonder who she is, and then makes us want to be her. The lack of copy is refreshing as it spares us retail cliches. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a story — quite the contrary. Art direction, photography, styling, props and the mood deliver.

No wonder. Fabien Baron is the art director, Steven Meisel is the photographer and models are legendary: Marisa Berenson, Sasha Pivovarova, Chiharu Okunugi, Yumi Nu. There are short films of Chloë Sevigny in a bubble bath and Charlotte…