Gone but not forgotten: Photos of clothing stores we miss
The mall used to be a world unto itself. You could spend an entire Saturday inside one and come home with a new outfit, a new sense of yourself, and the vague suspicion that you had been somewhere that mattered. Saturday afternoons smelled like Orange Julius and department store perfume.
Then the stores started disappearing.
Not all at once. One by one, across a decade and then another, the places that had organized entire phases of your life simply closed. Some went bankrupt. Some were swallowed by larger companies and renamed into something unrecognizable. Some just ran out of reasons to exist in a world that had moved its shopping elsewhere. These are the ones we keep reaching for.
Image credit: elp22203 / Reddit
Casual Corner
Casual Corner was founded in Connecticut in 1950 and grew into a mall fixture with 525 locations. It sold the clothes women bought for first interviews and the occasions that required looking polished without looking overdone. Pastel blazers, coordinated separates, shoes that matched. The chain closed around 2005.
Image credit: hotbowlsofjustice / Reddit
Merry-Go-Round
Merry-Go-Round was founded in 1968 and grew into one of the most trend-responsive retailers of the 1980s. Buyers reportedly watched MTV to identify what was selling before it hit the mainstream and stocked accordingly. At its peak, the chain operated close to 1,500 stores. It filed for bankruptcy in 1994 and closed all locations by 1996, one of the largest retail bankruptcies in American history.
Image credit: Yahoo
The Limited
The Limited was founded in 1963 and grew to over 700 locations, becoming a defining presence in women’s workwear. It gave rise to Express, Lane Bryant, and Abercrombie and Fitch before those brands were spun off. The company closed all physical stores in 2017. A store you cannot walk into is a different thing entirely.
Image credit: pool-of-tears / Reddit
Contempo Casuals
Contempo Casuals sold the clothes that appeared in Sassy magazine and on the backs of early 1990s band members. Velvet minidresses, sunflower prints, jelly shoes. Shirley Manson wore a Contempo jacket to the Grammys. Wet Seal acquired the brand in 1995, and the name disappeared into consolidation.
Image credit: rndoreviews1 / reddit
Gadzooks
Gadzooks opened in Dallas in 1983 and became the slightly subversive stop in any mall: Dr. Martens, Calvin Klein, sarcastic graphic tees, and a Volkswagen Beetle placed in every single location as a nod to the late-1960s vibe. It filed for bankruptcy twice before Forever 21 acquired it in 2005. The beetle, presumably, was left behind.
Image credit: TyWormely1999 / Reddit
Fashion Bug
Fashion Bug was one of the few mainstream mall retailers that carried plus sizes as a genuine priority rather than an afterthought, at affordable prices, long before size-inclusive fashion became a cultural talking point. Ascena acquired parent company Charming Shoppes in 2012 and closed all locations. A Change.org petition at the time drew over a thousand signatures.
Image credit: crs1904 / Reddit
Chess King
Chess King was the men’s fashion answer to the mall boom of the late 1970s and 1980s, with over 500 locations selling bold, trend-forward clothing: skinny leather ties, shiny shirts, everything that made a certain kind of man feel dressed for what came next. Merry-Go-Round acquired Chess King in 1993 as part of its ill-fated expansion, and all remaining stores closed by 1995.
Image Credit: Zoran Jesic/iStock
Wrap up
The stores are gone, but the clothes are somewhere, in photographs and in memory, in the specific feeling of finding the right thing at the right price in a store that understood exactly who you were trying to be that year.
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Related:
- Gone but not forgotten: Photos of classic mall stores we miss
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