Zara discovers your dad’s lungi — sells it for $100
Who knew Bengali/South Asian dads were so fashion forward?
Zara, one of the world’s most well-known fast-fashion brands, recently started selling what they describe as a “flowing skirt with draped detail in the front” — which sounds innocent enough… until you see it.
Yeah, that’s cultural appropriation — Zara is selling lungis. The breathe-easy, feel the wind between your thighs, cultural staple made for humid climates that most of us plead with our fathers to not wear outdoors.
The lungi-copy is currently being sold on Zara’s UK, Canadian and US sites for £70/$99 CAD/$89 USD, roughly 40 times the Tk200 that they’re available for in Bangladesh.
The irony of Zara selling lungis isn’t lost on us.
Bangladesh is home to 262 commissioned factories for Zara’s parent company, Inditex — a massive presence in the country by one of the world’s largest apparel companies, one with $25 billion in annual sales.
Last week, Oxfam International released “Reward Work, Not Wealth”, which highlights that it takes CEOs of the world’s 5 largest garment companies (including Inditex) 4 days to earn the average lifetime earnings of a woman Bangladeshi garment worker.
Yet, Zara’s newest addition to their collection is the latest failure of a tone-deaf fashion industry. Zara is effectively employing Bangladeshi factory workers in paltry conditions, paying them basement wages to create apparel which appropriates their culture. That, friends, is all types of messed up.
The lungi is the latest target of Western fashion — Eastern traditions celebrated as Western creations. As these trends continue, here’s hoping the West and its fashion sense realize that in order to take, you have to accept and respect our culture and our people wholly and entirely — starting with our garment workers.
