Why Forever 21 is Bad? My Personal Experience with it
It’s been over a year since I have shopped at Forever 21, and considering this was my one stop favorite stop for clothes it’s been a rough ride. On the bright side after I stopped shopping at Forever 21 I got the chance to open my horizons to lots of new brands and explore a different side of my fashion taste.
My History with Forever 21
The first time I went to a Forever 21 was at The Domain back when I lived in Austin, Texas in 2013. I had heard my best friend shopping here a lot and wanted to give it a try! Unfortunately I was still a very small 6th grader so their clothes didn’t really fit me so I couldn’t buy anything.
Then in 8th grade I ordered a bunch of leggings and shorts from Forever 21.com in literally every color which I still own to this day!
Forever 21 opened in Hyderabad, India back in 2015. This was the first time I shopped at Forever 21 in stores. I bought two pairs of jeans and starting buying more things from Forever21.com. In 2017 I bought a dress from Forever21.in
As you can see Forever 21 is a brand I truly enjoyed! I had a lot of clothes from there in different varieties from tops, dresses and skirts! There is a definitely a lot of variety offered from them in terms of color and style of clothing so it was always super appealing to me and the price of their clothing is super cheap.
Why I Stopped Shopping at Forever 21?
As a fashionista I love buying new clothes all the time and trying things out and buying clothes is something that makes me happy and I love my clothing collection but eventually I started not loving my clothes anymore.
I realized that the quality of clothing from Forever 21 was really bad. My clothes were shrinking after a few washes, getting holes and in some cases just not fitting well. I was also receiving clothes from third party brands when I shopped at Forever 21.com which were not of good quality and sometimes ended up being sheer or awkward fitting. Recently, I also started developing rashes on my skin after wearing their clothes.
Also it was during this time of year when I was making my own subscription fashion box for a business competition and learned about fast fashion through some research. Fast fashion is basically when companies produce large quantities of clothing at a cheap cost using cheap materials through the creation of microseasons and making people feel like they’re out of trend. This is bad because we end up actually wasting a lot of resources as we have more clothes than we need which leads to clothes being incinerated. It also is bad for the factory workers producing these clothes are in poor working conditions, get low wages and are exposed to toxic chemicals. Plus there is a large wastage of water. Now generally I don’t find myself super involved in social issues like this but after going into in depth research on fast fashion it made me reconsider my clothing choices as a consumer. Forever 21 is one of the largest fast fashion retailers out there and after learning about fast fashion it made me want to step away from the brand. This doesn’t mean that I will never ever shop at Forever 21 again. Forever 21 definitely has cute clothes and good prices and in their defense for the prices we pay those clothes don’t deserve to last but I would really appreciate if Forever 21 could take more responsibility for their production. Perhaps if their factory workers were better treated and their clothing quality improved I may be able to reconsider shopping there again but for now I only ever plan on going there if I’m going to a costume party with clothes I will never wear again.
So this was in October 2018 I made my last purchase at Forever 21 and decided that it was time to move on from the brand. Since then I have started spending more money on my clothes and being more conscious about my decisions. Going for quality over quantity and trying to find those more timeless pieces that I can wear with different pieces in my wardrobe.
I have also tried a ton of new brands like: Madewell, Free People, American Eagle, NY & Co, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Lord and Taylor, H&M, Guess, Lulus, Everlane, Brandy Melville and more to come! This really helped me understand my personal style and break away from just being the usual Forever 21 girl.
Let me know in the comments what you think about Forever 21 and what you think about this new journey I’m going through! I know not all the brands I mentioned which I’m exploring are fast-fashion free but it’s definitely really cool to be exposed to different brands and try new things!
