Marta Ortega, whose father founded Zara-owner Inditex, will become the world’s most powerful woman in the ready-to-wear sector when she takes the reins of the company on Friday.
Described as discreet and reserved, the 38-year-old has long been expected to one day take over the world’s biggest fashion retailer ahead of Sweden’s H&M, with roughly 6,500 shops around the globe.
But it was only in November that Inditex announced that she would on April 1 take the place of Inditex chairman Pablo Isla, who oversaw a massive expansion of the firm over the past decade.
The shake-up was orchestrated by Marta’s father Amancio Ortega, who founded Inditex in 1985. He resigned as chairman in 2011 but still owns a 59 percent stake, making him one of the world’s richest men.
“We have been preparing for this transition for a long time,” Isla, who is leaving the firm, told a press conference called to announce the changes.
“Marta has been working in the company for 15 years. She has led many projects” and “knows it like the back of her hand,” he added.
– Fashion world connections –
The only child from Amancio Ortega’s second marriage to Flora Perez, Marta grew up in the rainy fishing port of La Coruna in northwestern Spain with her half-sister Sandra and half-brother Marcos.
After attending a Swiss boarding school and graduating from the European Business School in London in 2007, she briefly worked as a shop assistant at a Zara store in London to better understand how they operate.
“The first week, I thought I was not going to survive. But then you get kind of addicted to the store. Some people never want to leave,” she said during a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal in August 2021.
While she did not reveal that she was the Inditex owner’s daughter, her colleagues at the shop have told Spanish media they soon figured it out when they noticed the Rolex watch she wore.
