When journalist Anne-Marie Schiro reviewed the arrival of Zara International on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1989, she used the phrase “fast fashion” to describe its approach. The new shop offered fresh styles that only 15 days earlier had been dreamt up at the company’s headquarters in Spain.

Zara, Ms Schiro wrote, was speaking a language understood by young people on a budget “who nonetheless change their clothes as often as the colour of their lipstick”. Her words were a powerful prophecy of a new era in fashion. By 2012, Zara’s parent company Inditex was churning out 840 million garments a year.