Forever 21 used to stand for becoming a young adult and being able to shop for myself with my own money. Gone were the days of mom dragging me to the Burlington Coat Factory or T.J. Maxx and having her pick out all my clothes. I could finally start shopping online for cool and trendy clothes like all my friends! See, living in southwest Florida there wasn’t a Forever 21 in sight. I had to shop online and get all of my Forever 21 clothes shipped to me. I think this just made the want/need to shop there even greater because it made it a production. Every day, I would watch the online shipment tracker like my life depended on it, waiting for the day I could come home from school to find the package sitting on my front stoop. My over enthusiastic reaction would result in something like this:
To answer your question, yes. This embarrassing gem was indeed posted on Facebook and even had the caption “OH MY GOODNESSSS :D”.
It has taken some time, but I have realized something crucial to my becoming an actual adult at the age of 21. I deserve better than Forever21.
That’s just it. I believe that one of the main selling points of Forever 21 are the inexpensive price tags. It made it easy for me to spend less money and still receive a good number of clothes. Being young and not having buckets of money laying around means shopping at places like this. However, there is no need for clothes, no matter how cheap they are, that have the tendency to break or tear within the month.
Now that I am actually 21, I deserve better quality clothes that will last. One of my favorite stores to shop at now is Old Navy. Yup, that’s the place I used to label as “the soccer mom store.” Despite this, that is where I bought my first pair of grown up jeans that didn’t suffocate my legs like the ever popular skinny jeans. It is where I found all my clothes for the professional internship I had over the summer. I joke that on any given day if Old Navy found me, they could photograph me for their advertisement by wearing their clothing from head to toe.
The concept of being completely comfortable AND completely stylish was at the time foreign to me.
I have moved on to better things my friends. This is not to say that I don’t occasionally shop at Forever 21, it just means that I have taught myself better shopping habits. Forever 21 is great for buying a nice statement piece or two, but not an entire wardrobe.
I used to worry that if I stopped shopping at stores like Forever 21 and H&M, that it would make me an old lady. You know what? If that makes me old, oh well! You just have to block out the haters.
HCXOXO
Alana Long