Why are people mad at Zara? 2023 Palestine fashion campaign controversy explained amid mass boycott calls

Spanish multinational retail apparel chain Zara recently came under fire after its brand-new advertising campaign went viral. Dubbed “The Jacket,” the campaign is part of the brand's Atelier series’ Collection 4 and features model Kristen McMenamy.

She is seen carrying a mannequin shrouded in white cloth, while other mannequins lying around in white appear to be missing limbs. The fashion campaign also has rubble shown in the images, with a particular plasterboard in the background reportedly shaped like the map of Palestine.

As soon as the fashion campaign images surfaced online, it stirred up a controversy, with netizens now comparing the ad depiction with images from Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. People are so mad that they have even called for a mass boycott of Zara, with the hashtag #boycottzara now trending.

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“I will never, ever, buy anything from Zara, ever again”: Retail clothing giant faces severe online backlash for their alleged Gaza-themed campaign

Last week, Zara unveiled its newest collection via a controversial ad campaign as it allegedly featured images similar to that of the Israel-Hamas conflict currently ongoing in Gaza.

While the brand's campaign particularly endorses the jacket worn by model Kristen McMenamy, the depiction of her carrying a white cloth-covered mannequin has incited anger and criticism among social media users who drew a resemblance of it with the images of dead bodies in Gaza.

Zara also found itself in deep waters as other images showed the model inside wooden boxes similar to coffin pictures flooding the internet from mass graveyards in Palestine. One image even showed a plyboard bearing a resemblance to the Palestinian map.

Since the campaign pictures went viral, they garnered enough traction online, with netizens now calling for a boycott of the brand and #boycottzara trending on all social media platforms. Many have even asked people not to buy anything from the retailer ever again, while also themselves pledging the same.

In fact, many people put the campaign images beside real-life photographs from Gaza, in an attempt to prove the resemblance. Here are some of the reactions from X (formerly Twitter) in this regard.

So far, Zara has deleted many of its posts on Instagram from the latest ad campaign, but not all of them.

While the purpose of the campaign may have been to promote the newest jacket lineup, whether it carried any underlying message remains unclear yet. The brand has not issued any clarification statement to date.

In the wake of the latest controversy, internet sleuths have also dug up a past inflammatory message of the brand’s head women’s designer Vanessa Perilman to a male Palestinian model in 2021.

Perilman told Qaher Harhash via Instagram Direct Message (DM) in response to the latter’s pro-Palestine posts. A self-proclaimed, pro-Israel advocate told the Palestinian model, “Maybe if your people were educated, then they wouldn’t blow up hospitals and schools that Israel helped to pay for in Gaza.”

Back then, Vanessa faced mass outrage online, with many demanding the cancelation of the brand alongside her termination from the high-profile job. She later issued a public apology directed towards Qaher Harhash.

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Zara controversies over the years

For those uninitiated, the brand has faced numerous controversies in the past few years. For instance, in 2016, BBC News published that they discovered evidence of child labor and exploitation in factories in Turkey.

Likewise, in 2014, many media outlets including BBC reported that the brand sold children's clothing similar to Holocaust inmates, seven years after it was accused of printing swastike on a bag's design. The company also sparked copyright infringement controversies in 2016 and 2018.

Last year, ahead of Black Friday, thousands of employees went on strike demanding better wages in the company's hometown in Arteixo, Galicia, Spain.