As shoppers drop out of the mall in favor of online merchants, it’s no wonder retailers are closing down. And it’s sometimes telling which ones are getting the ax.
One recent casualty is Forever 21, once a staple of malls across the globe. The clothing chain will end operations in 40 countries and close 178 stores in the United States.
Leading a class that included H&M and Zara, Forever 21 had become the face of “fast fashion,” which offers the latest trends to consumers at dirt cheap prices.
So what brought it down? Is it that consumers don’t visit malls? Is it flagging demand for a $10 “will squat for tacos” T-shirt that will disintegrate after a few trips through the wash? Is it the advent of the internet or the decline of fast fashion?
It’s a little bit of everything, according to Linda Chang, the chain’s executive vice president.
Primarily, it’s that “the latest fashions” don’t have the pull with young shoppers they once did. Instead of fitting in, high schoolers and college students are increasingly looking to stand out and carve out their niche. Old-fashioned thrift stores help, but there’s more. A million online niche stores give them options children didn’t have 30 years ago.
Luella Roche, a 16-year-old from New York, makes money selling clothes on Depop, an app for hawking anything from clocks to cashmere sweaters. It’s like the new eBay, and it’s changing the way young people see fashion.
“Literally, ugly is cool on Depop,” Roche told the Cut. “Grandpa, big, Nike. Literally old people’s shoes are cool on Depop.”
Whether or not they’re buying into ugly being the new cool, lots of other young people see fast fashion, which relentlessly tries to keep up with the fads, as itself a fading fad. Depop boasts 5 million U.S. users, and the number of items sold through it in the U.S. doubled last year, according to the company. Resale marketplace ThredUp reports that the resale market as a whole is likely to double in the next five years, reaching $51 billion. By 2028, it could outgrow fast fashion.
In addition to excluding unique options, fast fashion’s ecologically destructive reputation is a hard sell for an environmentally conscious generation, and it’s notorious for relying on suspiciously cheap labor.
There may be a straightforward reason for Forever 21’s decreasing popularity. In 2012, the company’s founder, Do Won Chang, explained that the company got its name because “old people wanted to be 21 again, and young people wanted to be 21 forever.” But according to Gen Z, not everyone has a problem with clothes that look old or even a little ugly.
