My love-hate relationship with Zara continues. Earlier this week, I stopped by the store to pick up a silver clutch I spotted online, and to my delight, it was available! But thank goodness the cashier took his time getting me a pair of sunglasses, because while waiting at the cash register, I caught a whiff of something…unsavoury. Upon closer inspection, the source of the stench was none other than the silver clutch itself…or its lining to be more specific. That thing reeked! After a couple of days of not being able to get that clutch out of my head, I actually went back to the store yesterday to see if I’d imagined the gross smell, or hoping that perhaps the smell went away…but nope, once I opened the clutch, it hit me right in the nose. The same gross toxic smell. Sadness all around.

Having said that, it wasn’t my first “toxic smell experience” at Zara. Back in September I picked up a pleather top, which I proceeded to wear to work the next day. All day I kept smelling something weird…and as it turned out, it was me! Having bought another pleather shirt from Zara that didn’t make me smell weird, I figured it had to have been some weird fabric smell, but when I tried returning it (seriously that thing smelled awful and fishy), the manager wouldn’t let me, saying that no one else had reported this issue, and pretty much implying that it had to have been my own body odour. Ugh…as if! So the smelly shirt is now languishing at the bottom of my laundry basket…never to be worn again. Having googled this, I found out that other people have had a similar problem with faux leather products too, so Zara is certainly not alone in this. Well, after some prodding from Greenpeace, Inditex (Zara’s parent company) has finally agreed to go toxic-free by 2020. That’s a long time from now, sure…but hopefully I won’t have to smell any more toxic items in their stores any time soon.

Have you had any toxic Zara experiences? Would love to hear about them. Share in the comments!

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