While shopping at the Harbor Lifestyle mall in Mérida, Mexico this year, 24-year-old hospitality student Mascha Rudolph, did a double-take. The store’s big logo, all-white interior, and enormous size all screamed Forever 21, but she could have sworn the fast fashion retailer had shuttered all of its shops years ago.
The student from Germany, who’s completing a year abroad in Latin America, stepped inside and was immediately transported back to her teens, when she shopped at Forever 21, a store known for basics like t-shirts as well as “going out tops,” festival outfits, and clubbing apparel. Nowadays, Rudolph normally eschews fast fashion, but the thrift stores and sustainable brands she prefers are hard to come by in Mexico so she bought a baby-blue romper and imitation gold necklace during her visit. The store “looked the same as 10 years ago,” she says. “It felt very familiar.”
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