Gloomy Galicia and its Fashion Empire

The past two months have been insane for me. I finally graduated from my master's at IED. YAY! Before all of our final papers and presentations though, as I mentioned in my previous post, my class went on a trip to La Coruña, Galicia to visit the Inditex headquarters in the small coastal town of Arteixo. I took a really nice and relaxing train ride from Madrid and gloomy weather greeted me as I arrived in Galicia as you can see in the pictures below.

On my train ride a copy of Grazia kept me company. It had a super cool fashion editorial with Chanel boards.

The city of La Coruña where my classmates and I spent the night. I was excited to be at the beach but with heavy rain clouds looming like this, there wasn't really a lot to be excited about especially because I forgot to bring an umbrella!

We couldn't take pictures inside but as the tour started, we couldn't help but feel like we were in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just like in the movie, only it was for fast fashion instead of sweets. I saw the work areas of the product managers, designers, buyers, etc. of brands like Zara woman, man, kids, a separate department for accessories, and a couple of other brands under Inditex. The building was very clean and minimalist and had open-plan work spaces in enormous white rooms. We went inside mock stores in the building were they set up the visual merchandising according to how they want it and send the pictures to all of the stores around the world to maintain uniformity. A huge room was also dedicated for their window display setups and we also toured the massive distribution center and warehouse which included a factory where some cutting and finishing are done. It's amazing how they react to trends almost lightning speed fast, the lady who toured us said that it only takes them about 20 days from design to store delivery. I used to develop merchandise for fashion retail companies and I know for a fact that this process normally takes MONTHS for a lot of retailers. A guy from the HR department talked to us before the tour ended. He mentioned that they opened about 1.5 stores per day in the past year. It was a very interesting look into the universe of the world's largest fashion retailer which is single-handedly revolutionizing how fashion is consumed nowadays. This company is definitely keeping our beloved luxury brands on their toes, churning out more collections per year than ever before.

After the tour, we did a little sightseeing, lounging around old coffee shops, and exploring quaint little stores while dragging our luggage through cobble stoned alleys. Our flight home was from the city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia where you'll find the cathedral which is the destination of the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago), a major historical pilgrimage route. It was my second time in the city and it was nice to see this amazing gothic structure once again. The weather continued to be quite gloomy, but it was a nice break from the sweltering Madrid heat.