Fast Fashion and Sustainability - The Case of Inditex-Zara

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Inditex’s business model of fast fashion and sustainability, specifically using Zara as a case study. The analysis focuses on the comparison of Inditex and their sustainability goals, against a fixed definition of sustainability split into three parts: profit, environment, and people. The methodology of the paper is analyzing Inditex’s 2018 Annual Report and their global sustainability goals against various scholarly articles and studies conducted of the company and sustainable fashion. Ultimately, I synthesized prior studies and added the most recent sustainability report published by Inditex. The findings show that while Inditex-Zara can take steps towards becoming sustainable, ultimately the company will never become completely sustainable according to the incompatibility of the business structures. Moreover, much of the rhetoric around sustainability is centered around creating goals, yet quite little action and results have been made. This paper contributes to the fast fashion industry literature by emphasizing the importance of the case study, the importance of sustainable actions, and decreasing the negative impact the fashion industry creates