Dressing up Zara-style – the big new shop welcomes all the willing shoppers.

One of the most popular medium range clothing brands, Spanish Zara, opened its first store in Kyiv. Like H&M or Mango, Zara is a chain store selling mass-produced stylish and trendy clothes at fairly reasonable prices.

Zara is one of the most successful clothes shops, at least in Spain. The first shop of the brand opened in 1975 in La Coruna, Spain, and is still open now. With an in-house design team based in in La Coruna, and a tightly controlled factory and distribution network, the company says it can take a design from drawing board to store shelf in just two weeks. This allows Zara introduce new items every week, keep customers coming back again and again to check out the latest styles.

The sign announcing Zara “opening soon” was seen on Khreschatyk for quite a few months, and with anticipation and excitement in those who were familiar with the brand it finally opened recently. When Zara finally opened its doors, it turned out to be a spacious shop with three levels offering clothes for the whole family. The ground floor displays include smart and classical every day clothing and evening wear for women and children’s wear, the second floor is all about jeans and casual wear for teenagers and youngsters, and the top floor is dedicated to men’s wear. The prices were also a pleasure to the eyes and purse – around Hr 100 to Hr 200 for a top, Hr 500 for a jacket, Hr 300 for a dress, or a pair of pants.

Because the store is so big, it really helps that garments are mostly sorted according to their color and style, and conveniently arranged on the racks, making things easy to find, especially when you know what exactly you are looking for. There is plenty of space, to move around without bumping into other shoppers, even though Zara is usually rather crowded. Plenty of shop assistants tidy up everything and are ready to help you fetch the size you’re looking for.

There are about five to six changing rooms on the second and top floors and you usually won’t have to wait too long. Large mirrors inside the cabins enable you to have a full-round look at yourself, which is important to make sure that an outfit looks perfect on you and the size is right.

The quality of Zara’s clothes in general is on a good level, and the assortment is so enormous that it seems almost anyone will be able to find something at a good bargain. As always, the collection of women’s wear is the widest, presented in several mini-sections: for mature women and those more business style suits, shirts, and pants. Classy evening wear should suit a woman of any age, and a special section carries clothes for pregnant women as well. The TRF line is targeted at young girls, offering lots of denim wear – overalls, shorts, vests, skirts and dresses apart from various jeans pants, also T-shirts with colorful prints for any taste, skirts of any length, track suits and other types of sporty wear, tops of all colors and shapes. The Basic line, on the other hand, contains simply cut jumpers, jeans, jackets, that don’t stand out too much and come in many different colors.

Men’s wear has a more or less regular set of suits, jeans, and shoes of popular styles. The kids’s section offers garments from infants to 14 year old teenagers.

What’s best about Zara, is that its designers obviously put a lot of effort in keeping up with latest fashions. For example, you’ll find plenty of chiffon blouses, tops and dresses in hippy style, introduced by world’s top brands like D&G as one of the main trends for spring/summer 2008. Elegant tuxedo-shaped jackets of different colors will help you gain the “masculine” look – another popular trend. Garments with ethnical prints will also come handy for those willing to look super stylish this season. In short, if you keep track of what’s in fashion, Zara will help you to put together an outfit very similar to the one suggested by your favorite designer.

The bag and purse collection is also something to look at, however the purses are thrown all over the store – there is no specified bag section for them, so to see the entire assortment, you’ll have to take a tour all round the shop. Same goes for shoes. While there is a great selection of them at Zara, you can basically find some new pair everywhere you go at the shop. Fabric ballet shoes with tops with stripes, dots and colorful prints, sandals on wooden wedges and elegant high-heeled sandals and shoes are lined up along all the shelves, so every step of the way, you may be tempted to throw off your own shoes and try on a pretty pair, that costs just about Hr 200 to Hr 300.

Source: http://www.kyivpost.com/