Zara
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40 free Zara trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Zara sells clothes in almost every big city on Earth, yet the company behind it gives very little away. Its founder avoided cameras for decades, the shops rarely explain themselves, and the brand's own name was an accident. That mix of huge reach and near silence makes Zara a rich source of fun facts. This quiz gathers the best of them. It covers how the first shop opened and where the name came from, the family who built the business, the system that moves a design from sketch to shop rail at record speed, the sister brands under the same roof, and the moments when a single Zara garment made the news. The opening questions are ones most shoppers can have a go at, and the later ones suit readers who follow the clothing trade closely. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories to repeat the next time you pass a Zara window.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Anthony Quinn film gave Zara's founders their first shop name, already taken by a nearby bar?
Zorba the Greek
Zorba the Greek gave them the name Zorba, but a bar two blocks away already used it, so the couple rearranged the sign's letters, reportedly with a spare 'a', to spell Zara.
Q 02Which First Lady wore a Zara jacket with a dismissive message on its back to visit detained migrant children?
Melania Trump
Melania Trump later said the message on the jacket was aimed at the people and media criticising her, not at the separated families she was visiting.
Q 03Which pattern covered the white Zara dress of summer 2019 so popular it gained its own Instagram account?
Polka dots
Polka dots made the loose £39.99 dress easy to recognise, and stylist Faye Oakenfull's account @Hot4TheSpot received up to 200 sightings a day from followers.
Q 04Zara spends next to nothing on which standard retail cost, putting the money into opening new shops instead?
Advertising
Advertising is almost absent from Zara's budget; its parent company relies on prime shop locations and window displays to pull shoppers in.
Q 05Zara's founder briefly became the world's richest person in 2015 by overtaking which tech billionaire?
Bill Gates
Bill Gates was passed when shares in Zara's parent company peaked, lifting its founder's fortune to about $80 billion.
Q 06Zara's publicity-shy billionaire founder is known for refusing to wear which staple of business dress?
A tie
A tie is missing from his daily uniform of blue blazer, white shirt and grey trousers, none of which comes from Zara.
Q 07Lefties, the budget sister chain of Zara, takes its name from which English word?
Leftovers
Leftovers from earlier Zara seasons stocked the first shops, and Lefties has since grown into the budget arm of Zara's parent company.
Q 08Which British royal, married in an Alexander McQueen gown, has often worn Zara on official engagements?
Kate Middleton
Kate Middleton mixes Zara, Reiss and Hobbs with couture, and what she wears sells out so quickly that the rush has a name, the Kate effect.
Q 09Zara's founder bought Seattle's Troy Block offices, making him a landlord to which locally based giant?
Amazon
Amazon uses the complex as part of its Seattle headquarters, one piece of a property portfolio that also includes Madrid's Torre Picasso skyscraper.
Q 10Zara's rapid production system borrowed the just-in-time approach designed by which Japanese carmaker?
Toyota
Toyota's idea of making only what is needed, when it is needed, was borrowed by Zara, which can ship finished clothes to shops worldwide within days.
Q 11Which Spanish billionaire, who left school as a boy to work for a shirtmaker, founded Zara in 1975?
Amancio Ortega
Amancio Ortega started as a shop hand at the shirtmaker Gala, where he learned to make clothes by hand, in the city where Zara later began.
Q 12Zara is the flagship of which parent company, the owner of Bershka and Pull&Bear too?
Inditex
Inditex was created in 1985 as a holding company for Zara and its factories, and its name shortens the Spanish for Textile Design Industry.
Q 13Zara's founder is considered a pioneer of which clothing business model, also followed by Primark and Shein?
Fast fashion
Fast fashion means copying catwalk trends quickly and cheaply; Zara reportedly needs only days to get a new design into its shops, against an industry average of six months.
Q 21Which young-fashion sister brand of Zara was bought from a Barcelona family in 1999?
Stradivarius
Stradivarius, which puts a treble clef in its logo, was started in Barcelona in 1994 by the Triquell family, who sold 90 per cent of it to Zara's parent company for €108 million.
Q 22If a new Zara design fails to sell well, how soon is it pulled from the shops and replaced?
One week
One week is all a design gets; in the early 2000s Zara expected a customer to call in 17 times a year when a typical Spanish chain expected three.
Q 23Through his foundation, Zara's founder gave Spain's public hospitals €320 million in 2017 to fight which disease?
Cancer
Cancer detection and treatment machines, more than 290 of them, were bought with the gift, which was announced on his 81st birthday.
Q 14Zara opened its first shop outside Spain in 1988 in which city in northern Portugal?
Porto
Porto came 13 years after the first Zara, and the United States and France followed within two years.
Q 15The first Zara opened in 1975 in which Spanish port, home to the Roman-built Tower of Hercules lighthouse?
A Coruña
A Coruña is where Zara's founder had moved as a boy, and the company never left: its head office is in the neighbouring town of Arteixo.
Q 16Zara co-founder Rosalía Mera left school at 11 to work in a shop and train for which trade?
Seamstress
Seamstress training paid off: when she died in 2013, Forbes ranked Mera as the world's richest self-made woman.
Q 17Which campaign group's 2012 Toxic Threads report pushed Zara to pledge to remove hazardous chemicals?
Greenpeace
Greenpeace published the report as part of its Detox campaign, and Zara made its pledge just nine days later.
Q 18Zara's owner signed a safety accord for which country after a 2013 building collapse killed over 1,100 workers?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh's Rana Plaza disaster led more than 200 clothing brands to sign a legally binding agreement with trade unions on fire and building safety.
Q 19In 2008 Zara's parent group overtook which US chain to become the world's biggest fashion retailer by sales?
Gap
Gap saw its quarterly sales fall 10 per cent to €2.17 billion while the Spanish group's rose to €2.22 billion, enough to change places at the top.
Q 20Which Italian-sounding label, owned by Zara's parent company, has a made-up name rather than a real designer's?
Massimo Dutti
Massimo Dutti was founded in Spain in 1985 as a menswear shop, and the name does not belong to any designer.
Q 24In 2024 Zara's founder set up a €100 million fund for victims of catastrophic floods around which Spanish city?
Valencia
Valencia and its suburbs bore the brunt of the storm, known in Spain as a DANA, and the fund was aimed at the hardest-hit communities.
Q 25Marta, the Zara heiress who became chair of its parent company in 2022, started work in a Zara shop in which city?
London
London was where she had just finished a business degree, and she started on the shop floor of the Chelsea branch before moving through other departments.
Q 26Marta, heiress to the Zara fortune, wore a wedding gown by which Italian couture house when she married in 2018?
Valentino
Valentino made the dress for her wedding to Carlos Torretta, so the bride whose family built Zara did not marry in Zara.
Q 27Zara's founder moved to the company's home city as a boy because of his father's job in which industry?
Railways
Railways employed his father, whose new posting uprooted the family, and the boy soon left school to work as a shop hand.
Q 28Before Zara existed, its founder started a company in 1963 to sell which quilted garments?
Bathrobes
Bathrobes were the business of his firm Confecciones Goa, set up a dozen years before the first Zara shop opened.
Q 29In 2022 Zara surprised British shoppers by starting to charge £1.95 for which previously free service?
Returning online orders
Returning online orders began to cost £1.95 in Britain in May 2022 for some purchases, and the fee reached Spain, Zara's home market, in February 2023.
Q 30On which big shopping day in 2022 did around 1,000 Zara shop assistants go on strike in the company's home city?
Black Friday
Black Friday was chosen to press for better pay, and the company agreed to a rise of €322 a month before a second walkout could happen.