● Zara (River North) - Popular Spanish retailer winning over Mag Mile shoppers with cheap, chic, stylish mens' and womens' threads.
● Belly Shack (Logan Square) - Chef Bill Kim opens the long-awaited sister restaurant to Urban Belly.

The retail industry is suffering. Stores across the board are noting drops in profits for 2009, and Zara too suffered an 8% drop in profits in the first half of the year in Western markets. But overall, things are looking up at the retailer. In fact, altogether "sales at the Spanish company were up 7%, boosted by rapid growth in Asia," says Just Style. And, with e-commerce in the works (slated to service markets all over the world), there's a good chance profits will continue to grow.

For most shoppers, the behind-the-scenes facets of fast fashion are pure mystery. But, given the economic crisis’ effect on the retail market worldwide, it’s well worth looking into. Especially in the case of mega retailer Zara, “the $13.8 billion company, which is closing in on Gap for the title of world’s biggest clothing retailer,” according to Spiegel. So, how exactly do they do it?

Can you guess who the world's largest clothing retailer is? If you guessed Gap, you would have been right up until a day ago. Zara has reportedly taken over Gap's top spot. The Spanish fashion chain overtook Gap thanks to aggressive expansion; Zara now has almost 3,900 stores across 70 countries, resulting in €2.22 billion ($4.21 billion) in the first quarter of its financial year. That's a lot of moderately priced blouses. Gap's pinning hopes for a rebound on new creative director Patrick Robinson.