October Theory and Limited Too
after school weekend edition
Welcome back to After School Weekend Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. Your support keeps this newsletter going! 💫
Today we’re talking about:
The Great Mall comeback
Millennials bullied Limited Too into making adult sizes
The #1 denim brand for Gen Z
An extremely important update on the boat shoe resurgence
The official hair-tool sponsor of Sabrina Carpenter’s tour
The “I lied. Put your clothes back on...” trend
Girls are lusting after one of the Menendez brothers
One of the worst songs from 2017 is trending again
Why everyone on TikTok is sharing their Chick-fil-A order
The “ladies, remember why you went into work today” trend
Chicken wine
Plus everything else that happened this week in trends and what I’m buying/reading/listening to. First, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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I grew up shopping at Limited Too when I was a tween in the late 90s. What I remember most is that it was a sparkly paradise, everything brightly colored and covered in glitter. There were inflatable chairs and beaded curtains galore, plus rainbow-colored spaghetti strap tanks, floral board shorts, and butterfly hairclips.
The aesthetic was similar to dELiA*s, though of the two, I recall preferring Limited Too, especially when I was younger. Not only was the in-store experience so special, but the clothes felt decidedly made for me in a way dELiA*s — which skewed a bit older — was not. I liked being a tween and shopping at a store that was so clearly intended for tweens.
Limited Too first launched in 1987 as the tween division of The Limited and exited the market in 2009. The Limited, then owned by Les Wexner’s conglomerate L Brands, continued on until 2017 when it declared bankruptcy and closed 250 stores nationwide; the demise of L Brands — which at one point also operated Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Lane Bryan, Lerner New York, and, of course, Abercrombie & Fitch — came a few years later.
After 15 years, Limited Too, now owned by Bluestar Alliance, the same brand management company that just bought Off White from LVMH, returned to stores in July, available exclusively at Kohl’s.
Of all department stores, Kohl’s makes the most sense for a brand like Limited Too because of their relationship with tween favorite Sephora. There are now more than 1,000 Sephora shop-in-shops at Kohl's locations, with the goal to have a Sephora in every Kohl's by 2025. When I went to a Kohl’s near my hometown last Christmas, the store was busier than I’d ever seen it, and the Sephora was absolutely mobbed by tweens.
But something weird happened when Limited Too was relaunched.
Millennials flooded the comments, upset that the tween brand’s comeback collection was for tweens, even though at no point in the pre-launch press did the brand give any indication that it would be for anyone other than tweens.