Zara’s death pants are the smash of the summer

I feel okay stating that my favorite genre of fail videos are ones involving comical falls, because falling down for very stupid reasons and being incredibly relieved to not be witnessed is painfully familiar to me. (General pro tip: Don’t wear clogs to a self-service car wash.) But I take no pleasure in the number of women recently brought down by Zara’s flowy wide-leg pants, whose ultrawide hems and lightweight, silky fabric make it fiendishly easy for a walking — or worse, running — person’s foot to get caught in a swirl of excess material.

TikToks with titles like “These trousers should come with a warning label,” show wearers falling on the street, in parking lots, in their own homes, even in the hallway of a hospital shortly after being treated for an earlier pants-related injury. Other clips show bruises, scars, stitches and X-rays of broken bones along with cracked phone screens and ripped clothing. “As a tall girl, I thought I was safe from the Zara death pants,” wrote one wearer after “faceplanting in the middle of the street.” But standing still is no guarantee of safety either: One woman’s hem got caught in the teeth of an escalator.

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Zara has not publicly addressed the disaster pants, and if history is any guide, it won’t. The fast-fashion brand’s voluminous list of controversies includes everything from dead rats, racist and anti-Semitic unforced design errors, offensive advertising, copyright infringement, size discrimination, sweatshop labor and employee lawsuits. The jacket worn by Melania Trump to visit migrant children detained at the Southern border — emblazoned with the words “I DON’T CARE, DO U?” — seems to be the best distillation of the chain’s business practices.

Legal experts have noted that consumers are unlikely to have any legal case against the retailer because the oversized dimensions of the pant legs put them in the category of obvious risk. And since the pile-up of injuries hasn’t deterred women from buying the pants, it might just be that fashion victim is the real label of the summer.