As the economy boomed, society relaxed and Spaniards joyously re-learned one of their greatest national pleasures down the centuries: spending money on frivolities and personal display.Mr Ortega's genius was to turn young Spanish women's taste from twinkly cardigans, ruffles and polka dots and teach them to love the beige trouser suit. Spanish women today enjoy opportunities and freedoms inconceivable to their mothers, and have eagerly embraced a style that makes them look both feminine and business-like, comfortable and chic. Roberto Verino and Adolfo Dominguez the other giants of Galician fashion founded empires of their own supplying the prosperous end of this market.But Zara opened a seemingly inexhaustible seam by offering a cheaper and speedier version of the same thing. "Zara's aim was to democratise fashion," said the first annual report in 1999.
"In contrast to the idea of fashion as a privilege, we offer accessible fashion, inspired by the taste desires and lifestyle of modern men and women."I was in Bilbao last weekend, a city whose women are famed for their keen fashion sense. Around midnight on Sunday the streets of this sober city were quiet, except on a corner that commands two busy boulevards next to a famous caf?a shop sleek with glass and steel and blazed with light. It was Zara, whose assistants were feverishly shifting hundreds of pieces of new stock from a lorry that had driven that morning from A Coruna at the other end of Spain, to be on the rails in Bilbao first thing on Monday.. "A club no more" that is the subtitle of the final volume of David Kynaston's renowned history of the City of London, which was published last week.
"A club no more" that is the subtitle of the final volume of David Kynaston's renowned history of the City of London, which was published last week. It covers the City story from 1945 to 2000, a tale it tells as brilliantly as the previous volumes charted the earlier periods. The post-war history divides into four distinct chapters of the City's development.First, there was the need to finance post-war reconstruction and manage an enormous national debt, tasks that preoccupied the City through to 1959. Period two saw the birth of the eurodollar and eurobond markets at the beginning of the Sixties, which enabled it to re-enter the international banking and securities business and unseat New York as the largest international financial centre in the world. Period three encompassed the fraught Seventies with the fringe bank crisis and, until Big Bang in 1986, the growing chasm between the City's domestic and international business. Finally, with period four came the boom in finance that has run from Big Bang through to 2000 and has, more than any other single sector of the economy, driven the burst of prosperity experienced by London and the South-east over the last eight years.Many themes emerge which relate to particular stages of this progress. They include the shift of power from the merchant banks and towards the clearing banks in the Fifties. Then there was the stroke of pure glorious luck that the US introduced the interest equalisation tax in 1963, just at the moment when the City was starting to develop the eurobond market.
