A girl found a mouse sewn into her Zara dress

Zara is again in the eye of the storm. The protagonist of the latest scandal is Cailey Fiesel, 14-year-old girl from Manhattan, who found an unpleasant guest into her purchase. A mouse was hiding inside the girl’s black dress, firmly enclosed within the seam of the zipper.

Cailey was alarmed by the strong, bad smell coming from the item, caused by the animal’s advanced state of decomposition. “I saw the little leg that was coming out of the seam that I had touched, which was really horrifying,” she told The New York Post, “I froze – I was paralyzed with fear”.

The mistake could have been caused by a lack of attention during the quality controls which precede the distribution of the products, but this is not the first time Zara finds itself involved in a scandal.

Only a few months ago the Spanish fashion giant, which is part of Amancio Ortega’s Inditex Group, has been accused by an LA illustrator to have shamelessly copied her designs. The artist, known as Tuesday Bassen, has denounced the plagiarism through her Instagram account, followed by a press release issued by the company that announced the immediate suspension of the sale of the incriminated products.

In addition to the (numerous) cases of copycat – Zara is famous for having made the dream of high fashion accessible to all – the brand has faced numerous controversies over the past years. Last May, for example, the Ungendered line, created to keep up with the times by proposing unisex garments, has sparked sharp criticism: the items appeared to many as simply masculine, and adapted to the female body. Instead of eliminating the concept of gender – as suggested by the name, Ungendered – the line seemed to refer to a single silhouette: the male one, in fact.

A series of embarrassing scandals that didn’t affect in any way the brand's turnover during the first six months of the year: Inditex has witnessed a growth of 8% over the same period of 2015.