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Zara, the Spanish apparel chain, pulled a children’s Halloween costume on Wednesday amid criticism that it resembled Nazi concentration camp uniforms.
Zara’s own description advertised “vertical stripes with decorative topstitching” and “a distressed effect” on the gray-and-blue cardigan-and-shorts set. A Google-indexed version of the U.S. listing showed a $59.90 price.
The look resembled Michael Keaton’s suit in the 1988 film Beetlejuice. However, online commenters said its stripes and glossy crisscross stitching evoked prisoner clothing and barbed wire seen in World War II photographs.
As of Thursday, Zara had offered no explanation, issued no public statement, and left a request for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) unanswered.
Zara has drawn similar backlash before. In 2007, it took a handbag off store shelves after a shopper found a swastika sewn into it, and its parent company, Inditex, said the version Zara had cleared never included the symbol.
Seven years later, Zara apologized for a blue-and-white top bearing a yellow six-pointed star across the chest, which Zara Israel marketed as a “striped sheriff t-shirt.” The brand halted sales and destroyed the unsold stock because the item evoked both inmate attire and the badges the Third Reich imposed on Jews.
“This is not the first time this has happened and it once again makes abundantly clear: The glaring absence of Holocaust knowledge is pervasive,” Gideon Taylor, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, wrote in an email to JTA.
“It shouldn’t take the risk of a Shoah survivor opening their door and seeing children that look like they are in concentration camp uniforms for us to see where we have to do better,” Taylor added.
Zara has listed this costume for kids on their website, unmistakably resembling a Holocaust prison outfit.
It has since been removed from their site. But somebody designed this, approved it, and posted it online.
How could so many people not realize how deeply offensive this… pic.twitter.com/jhoDim5dRF
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) September 30, 2026
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