What's going on?

Inditex loves this whole �reintegrating-into-polite-society� look you�ve got going on: the biggest fashion retailer in the world announced stronger-than-expected quarterly results on Wednesday.

What does this mean?

It�s been a weird year, and not a particularly helpful one for gauging growth. That�s why Inditex put its update into context by comparing last quarter�s sales to those in 2019. And it wasn�t exactly a favorable match-up: the Zara owner�s first-quarter sales were down 12% from the same time that year.

Still, it�s not exactly a fair fight: Inditex�s stores were open for 24% less time. So all else equal, you�d probably expect sales to fall by around a quarter. A drop-off of only half that size, then, was seen as a nice surprise, and helped drive a better-than-expected quarterly profit. The trend looks set to continue too: Inditex said that sales are up 5% versus 2019 so far this quarter, even though its stores have been open for 10% less time than normal.

Why should I care?

For markets: The only way is growth.

UBS argued in February that investors would, by the second half of the year, only care about stocks with strong earnings growth, rather than the cheap-looking �value� and economically sensitive �cyclical� stocks that were popular in the first half. But the bank might not have been ambitious enough: Inditex�s high-growth stock is up about 9% in the last three months alone, while a key index of European energy stocks � which ticks both the �value� and �cyclical� boxes � has stayed flat.

The bigger picture: Keep up with the last fashion.

Sustainability�s been important to European investors for a while now, and it�s forced the fashion industry � the second-most polluting in the world � to do some soul-searching. That�s why second-hand fashion startups have been making a name for themselves. US investors might want to start taking notice of them too: US ecommerce company Etsy just bought UK fashion reseller Depop for $1.6 billion.