Spanish clothing brand Zara has once again caused a stir, and not due to their avant-garde, high street style. Last week, American First Lady (and fellow immigrant) Melania Trump made a rare public appearance to visit child detainees at one of her husband’s immigrant internment camps. Her clothing said it all: the army-green Zara windbreaker (which originally retailed for $39 and is now going on eBay for upwards of $500) declared in graffiti-style letters “I really don’t care, do u?” It’s about the only statement that she has made in regards to the persecution of immigrants that is now gaining steam in the United States.

To argue that “it’s just a coat,” or that “there’s no hidden message”, as Melania’s spokespeople have tried, is worse than disingenuous. The message isn’t hidden at all: it’s in large letters across her back. And the idea that fashion exists in a vacuum is ridiculous, which the former model knows well. When Trump ascended to the presidency, many notable designers, fully cognizant of how their clothes on Melania might be read as a tacit endorsement of Trump, refused to dress the new First Lady. Since Jacqueline Kennedy, the fashion choices out of the East Wing have attracted attention, part of why Michelle Obama was mostly photographed wearing American designers and liked in particular to spotlight upcoming talent. She understood the platform that she represented.

This also isn’t the first time that Zara has ended up in the spotlight for fascist leanings. In 2014, they released a child’s long sleeved, striped T-shirt, emblazoned with a six-pointed star on the upper left chest. If the design is ringing a bell, it means you know your mid-century European history: the resemblance to concentration camp uniforms was striking enough that Zara withdrew the garment. There was also the 2007 swastika handbag, the 2017 Pepe skirt, and rumblings of antisemitism in the corporate environment.

Human rights abuses are more or less par for the course when it comes to ‘fast fashion.’ Maybe you’re justifying it in your head with the socialist truism that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so what can you do? Student budgets aren’t up for much, living in Dublin is really expensive and sometimes you just gotta have that adorable romper — but what if you’d been one of the Zara shoppers last winter who found notes for help stitched and tucked into their clothing? Zara is worth over €11 billion ($13 billion USD) as of May 2018, and has more than 6,000 stores worldwide, but apparently even that isn’t enough to pay factory workers a living wage or even pay them what they’re owed when a factory shuts down.

You’ve seen many hysterical news articles listing the industries and lifestyles that Millennials and Gen Z are killing, from diamonds to disposable napkins, suburbs and big cars. There’s a takeaway from that besides Boomers being hopelessly out of touch, and it’s this: we actually do have purchasing power. Our choices, which seem small individually, add up. We need to make informed choices about our purchasing habits: Zara is just one more high street label that sells nearly interchangeable staples, except that it’s also glorifying racism, genocide and the ‘alt-right.’ It’s time that we stop being complicit, and take our buying power seriously: we killed Toys R Us, we can take down Zara.