The camera picks out a sweet-faced man in a Jibaro (the classic Puerto Rican straw hat). ‘Qué rico es ser latino?’ (how wonderful it is to be Latino), he sings. Despite being from the Cheshire/Wirral borders, I cheer in agreement. It was last Sunday, and I joined 128.2 million other souls, carried with joy, hope and love through Bad Bunny’s 13-minute Super Bowl halftime show.
What a ride: twirling into a wedding, crash landing through the ceiling of a family home, perching atop an electricity pole—a nod to Puerto Rico’s colonial-era electricity disaster. It was a celebration of resistance and resilience. My heartstrings were tugged, my emotions stirred.
But wait—Bad Bunny, in a cream-collared shirt and tie, sport-inspired jersey, chinos, gloves and clutching a football- the ensemble looked vaguely familiar. Was he wearing…Zara? What?!
Indeed, he was, albeit Custom Zara, crafted specifically for him. By wearing Zara, he disrupted the luxury-only dominance at major cultural events. Think Rihanna’s all-red, custom Loewe 2023 Super Bowl outfit: luxury for the few.
If you’re going to break the traditional tie between Super Bowl star and luxury brand, then Zara, the biggest fast fashion brand, is an audacious choice. Inditex, the parent company, is a Spanish monolith that erased the traditional (and inherently sustainable) seasonal fashion cycle. Instead, Zara created a model around speed, responsiveness, and constant novelty. In my view, it’s an eco-disaster.
Opinions quickly polarised online, too. Some celebrated the democratisation. Others wondered how someone so attuned to social and cultural justice as Bad Bunny could spoil everything by endorsing fast fashion.
Clearly, Zara was chosen at least partly for its Spanish connection – the Inditex headquarters is in A Coruna. But Zara’s global footprint spans over 7,000 supplier factories, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign. Although traditionally it has used European bases for production (Bad Bunny’s custom Zara was made in Portugal), that’s not the full story. In 2024, Zara was linked to factories in Myanmar where 401 allegations of labour and human rights violations were reported. In 2023, they sourced from Pakistani factories with appalling safety and labour standards, according to an investigation by another NGO, Labour Behind the Label.
Fashion is one of the most labour-intensive sectors globally, employing around 75 million factory workers, yet fewer than 2% earn a living wage, as per a 2025 Earth Day report. Three-quarters are young women. Latin American women have their own story of exploitation in fast fashion, too. Many toil in Maquilas – export-processing zones – under some of the harshest conditions in the industry.
Meanwhile, last year, Zara/Inditex reported record profits: €38.6 billion in sales, €5.9 billion net profit – roughly the GDP of an entire small country like Burundi.
But here was Bad Bunny supercharging the brand even further! Data tech company Launchmetrics measures Super-Bowl-buzz using its Media Impact Value (MIV) metric, which translates social media chatter, brand mentions, and press coverage into cold hard cash. It calculated that Bad Bunny’s 13-minute set generated $170 million in just twelve hours, with Zara alone earning an estimated $3.1 million MIV. Regular Super Bowl advertising in the region costs around $7 million; instead, Zara got $3 million in global exposure from a styling decision.
But that’s just the start. Bad Bunny has delivered cultural credibility that marketing alone could never buy. It’s a blow to the resistance against mass production and high-impact fashion, and that’s a blow to me. My sympathies are with Pakistani-American label FOUND, which shared that it was in the running to dress Bad Bunny, before the styling direction changed. At least Lady Gaga wore a dress from an independent Brooklyn brand, Luar, by designer Raul Lopez. These are all stories I’m far more comfortable with.
Despite their successful Sunday, Zara and other fast fashion brands shouldn’t expect a golden future. Finally, we are seeing legislation emerge. For example, new European legislation (especially in France) against overproduction and waste shows that some societies are out of patience with high-impact sectors. Fast fashion’s future isn’t as secure as they have us believe. But luxury brands have little moral high ground either. They too have pursued hyper-growth, greenwashed, and violated labour rights.
We live in Bad Bunny’s world now. He is the zeitgeist, expanding the audience by leveraging Latinx identity, performing entirely in Spanish so that language and identity are no longer barriers. And that gives me hope. Ultimately, what Bad Bunny has created is a playing field where credibility now drives engagement more than flash.
It inspires desire grounded in story, culture, and connection rather than envy or FOMO. That’s big. That is worth something. The next piece of the puzzle is extending ethics, culture, and identity to good fashion, too. How do we do that? I don’t exactly know, but Bad Bunny seems like he would have some ideas.