“Is it sad to see fast fashion biting dust?” Kim France, founder of creative Condé Nast Shopper Lucky and producer of the popular newsletter Girls of a Ceed, spoke on Tuesday in response to the news that Forever 21 has filed for bankruptcy. The answer depends on how passionate the consumer is about both brick and mortar and hunting.
Anyone who has formed a search party to sneak up on low-rise jeans, rimmed crop tops, mesh flats, and more is familiar with the chain with anything that happened to be trending. At its peak, Forever 21 employs more than 43,000 people worldwide, bringing more than $4 billion in sales per year. As the chain's name implies, the target's consumer base was younger and skewed.
Back in early Aughts, when France first edited Lucky, she and her fashion editors made weekly scouting trips to the Forever 21 front post base in Union Square, Manhattan, tracking trend styles. Often, styles appeared on the sales floor before the magazine had the opportunity to report. “Zara is a little more refined, but it can be compared to Zara,” France said, referring to Spanish mass-market retailers. “Or maybe a top shop.”
Forever 21 may have lacked the curated cool of competitors like Topshop, a UK high street retailer. (These same clothes are now hotly traded online as vintages.) And they never stimulated Instagram tags or art-oriented haul videos.
However, from a huge amount of perspective, the retailer had no rivals.
Part of its appeal was the level of excitement that could not be replicated online. The adrenaline rush that comes from sifting through the stack of doross is finding something close, if not exactly the right one.
In the early days, Forever 21, growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, achieved cult status like the 32-year-old Antoinette Island, to create beelines for Columbia's malls, meeting budgets and finding “age-friendly quality” clothing that closely follows fashion trends. “The lighting, music and atmosphere were all tracking everything that was trending at the time,” said Ito, founder of Fourtwo, a creative Brooklyn-based agency.
Trendyness is just a small part of the appeal of Appear 21 Chain at 19-year-old Safiyyah Burns, a pre-law student at Loyola University New Orleans. “My friends don't want to go to the store anymore and deal with people or talk to the cashier,” she said. Many of her age cohorts may view the entire shopping experience as “seeing and buying online photos,” but Burns remains a holdout to do that in real life.
In part, it's the pleasant wonder of so many things sold online that are attracting her to brick and mortar shopping. “Thin clothes and jewels that will turn green in three days,” she said. In contrast, in real stores, buyers have the opportunity to assess quality in advance, and bypass inevitable trips to the post office with a return envelope (or frequently goodwill bin).
Last weekend, Burns went shopping with her boyfriend Jake Tentler, 20, a Loyola nursing student. “We're not too attached to cell phones, so we want to actually talk to people and see what's there in the store,” Burns said. Scrutinizing the clearance rack on the Forever 21, the couple came across a particularly cool men's shirt with a mirror beer logo printed on the front. They bought it for between $15 and $11.
Tuesday's announcement may have sounded like the death of the company – the couple's founder, Korean American immigrants, won and their Christian faith was at the heart of their business as Jin Soo-Khang refers to biblical poems.
Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy earlier in 2019, closing more than 30% of its US stores, and was later acquired from bankruptcy by SPARC Group, a joint venture between the real brand group and mall operator Simon Property Group.
In 2023, SPARC signed a contract with Shein, a Chinese e-commerce website known for not evenlying Forever 21 (and cited in court documents as part of the reason for Forever 21's current financial difficulties). The agreement allows Shein to operate a store with its store on Forever 21 Outlets. However, with this latest news, Forever 21 is moving forward as if all retailers were finally closed.
