Critics said the garment might have been flagged if H&M’s team was more diverse.

“It’s so easy to avoid this kind of controversy,” said Angel Sinclair, the founder of the advocacy group Models of Diversity. “If you care about being culturally sensitive, just be more culturally inclusive of talent and managers in the business.”

H&M has more than 100,000 workers worldwide. But the fashion giant’s board is entirely white. And retail experts said that much of the creative process takes place in and around its European home office, far from many of its markets.

Ms. Wu, who reports directly to H&M’s chief executive, Karl-Johan Persson, said she did not know the ethnic or racial backgrounds of the employees and contractors involved with the monkey hoodie. But an internal investigation of the incident — which she declined to discuss in detail — showed “how important awareness-raising is generally,” she said.

“There are hundreds of steps of getting a product to market — it’s never one point in time where we can say, ‘It’s your fault,’ because there are teams at work on things, there are approval processes throughout,” she said. “It’s really hard to pinpoint when.”

A Need for Speed

H&M and Zara used to stun the industry with their ability to move garments from design to store floor within weeks, when other retailers required more than half a year. But some brands can now perform the same feat much faster, while others, like Amazon and Adidas, are experimenting with on-demand manufacturing.