Huge Forever 21 Store Opens in Times Square

Posted on June 25, 2010

Forever 21 has opened a huge 90,000 square foot flagship store Manhattan's Times Square. The store has four levels and about 150 fitting rooms. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg attended the store opening.

Bloomberg told The New York Times that Forever 21 expects 100,000 people to visit the store daily.

The launch of the new Forever 21 store was helped with an interactive billboard that features an enormous model taking pictures of people in the crowd and sometimes picking them up. Take a look:

On behalf of The Cut, Cintra Wilson headed over to the giant new Forever 21 in Times Square. It's huge. It's full of capri leggings that cost only $4.50. When she saw how cheap the t-shirts were ($2.50 apiece!), she caved in and started loading up. Alas, the line at the checkout counter was so long she bailed out without buying anything. All she got was a dirty look from the salesgirl she gave her basket of clothes to.

As visions of sweat shop labor dance in her head, she sums up the Forever 21 vibe.

Forever 21 isn't about fashion any more than fast food is about cuisine. The addictive component is kicky shapes at price points you can find beneath the cushions on your couch, and the fact that you can buy 37 clothing items for under $200. If it's the slow-food, slow-clothes, minimalist approach of "less but better" you want in a wardrobe, you'd best skip this Times Square monstrosity and bugger off to Europe. Forever 21 is a shrine to the American obsession with More New Stuff.

When we read about how huge the store is, we had a feeling that the checkout was going to be a major pain unless they hired hundreds of employees for the one store. Clearly they didn't do that, which is going to lead to lost sales. No one likes to wait in line, after all.


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