To find out more about the Awkward Zara Instagram account, which collects some of the weirdest Zara pictures and shares it to its fanbase of 40.6k followers, Bored Panda reached out to its creator. The 27-year old from the UK, who works in marketing industry, told us that they haven’t ever really released their identity on the page “because the page is all about the awkward poses/products/website quirks, not about me.”

The author told us that the project started off as an escalation of a funny WhatsApp conversation they had with two of their friends during lockdown in 2020. “We were sending each other screenshots from the Zara website of models doing bizarre poses and asking ourselves what on earth was going on.”

“Models 6 ft up teetering on bookshelves, crouched on top of the cooker, half-submerged in a swimming pool… I’m quite an impulsive person and I knew there was a gap for a dedicated Instagram parody page, so within minutes, I had set up the handle and started cataloguing some of the weirdest poses I could find,” the author recounted.

But the captions at Awkward Zara are as funny as the images themselves. “It’s just so inexplicable and impossible to fathom that I thought they required an alternative caption with a parody explanation or imaginary scenario behind the pose, hence why each image is accompanied by a caption which is (hopefully) humorous and relatable.”

At first, it was just friends who followed, but within a couple of months, the page had blown up and been featured in the Sunday Times’ Style Magazine, The Independent, Sheerluxe, ‘At Home With…’

When asked what they think of these bizarre poses, the author of Awkward Zara believes that the brand is trying to set itself aside from its high-street counterparts and elevate the brand to a higher level. “It leads to them shooting less catalogue/commercial type shots, and adopting a much more editorial style more natural to designer brands or the pages of Vogue.”

“They obviously have some pretty inspired and ambitious minds running the shoots, and they have huge budgets—it’s not unusual for them to bring in huge names such as Anja Rubik and Palomija to model £20 stretch jersey dresses.”

Moreover, according to the Instagrammer, “awkward poses and unusual styling/staging naturally sparks conversations—they traditionally have never really engaged with influencer marketing or paid social (this is starting to slowly change though as Inditex shifts their focus on digital growth), so to an extent, it’s really free marketing for them when people share the poses on TikTok, Instagram, and elsewhere.”

Having said that, the author of Awkward Zara believes that the products speak for themselves. “Zara has such a cult following of loyal customers who are unlikely to be put off by awkward poses. Just look at how many influencers do Zara haul videos, etc. without ever being given anything from the brand!”

The issue with the weird poses is when there aren’t alternative product shots available, they said. “For example, when all of the product shots are either exclusively shot on models doing awkward poses, shot in B&W, or not shown on a model at all—that makes online shopping, which has been the only way for many people to shop during the pandemic, really difficult, and many people will give up trying to decode the mystery of what a piece of clothing might look like in real life and just abandon it altogether.”

Moreover, Zara seems to be expanding a lot of resources on cultivating their image and increasing digital sales, but the website has still to catch up. “I think quite a lot of people find it difficult and counterintuitive to use; Awkward Zara gets a lot of people venting in the DMs about how they’re getting pretty fed up with the website,” the creator said.

The reactions to Awkward Zara are really positive, assured its author as “there are a lot of funny interactions in the DMs as followers love to share their frustrations about how difficult the website can be, how weird some of the items are (hello shopping trolleys and arm warmers!), and they also regularly send in strange things which they’ve spotted on their Zara adventures.”

Turns out, it’s a really engaged community, and people love putting their reactions in the comments or tagging their friends because they can relate. Simultaneously, the author knows that’s when they’ve come up with a good caption.“

Aside from the humor, I have also had some more serious conversations with followers about diversity, cultural appropriation, the consumer experience, the fashion industry as a place to work, and much more, so it has become a really supportive space where people can share their frustrations, observations, and funny anecdotes.”