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Making Forever 21 Your Bitch, Part 3

Inexpensive clothes that don’t look cheap aren’t uber hard to find - if that was all we wanted, we’d hit The GAP and call it a day. But we want cheap clothes that take it to the next level, that actually look like they require Daddy’s Amex for purchase. In order to find such gems, especially in stores like Forever 21, we need to curb our inherent superficiality. It seems counterintuitive, I know; we can still be all judge-y and shit in everyday life, so cool your jets, bub. But if there’s one thing we must exempt from snap judgments, it’s clothing.

Making Forever 21 Your Bitch, Part 3: Don’t Judge a Shirt by its Hanger

Or a pair of pants or a skirt or whatever. You know by now which fabrics, colors, and embellishments to avoid when navigating a Forever 21. What of the blacks, neutrals, knits and satins that remain? If it looks totally cute on the hanger, it’ll probably be totally cute on, right? Wrong. So effing wrong.

When choosing a garment to try on at F21, you must first assess the material and ask yourself where you’ve seen something similar to said garment. If the fabric is any combination of cotton, rayon, spandex or lycra, and you’ve seen a version of it at Intermix, it’s a go. If the fabric is more than 50% polyester or satin and you’ve seen a version of it at Ricky’s, slowly back away from the garment.

This little white tee didn’t look like much on the hanger, but upon closer examination, I realized its fabric mimicked those faux broken-in tees priced at upwards of $50 at high-end boutiques. This one was one sale for $9.80. You can bet anyone who sees it is going to think it’s James Perse, Splendid, or C&C, and you can also bet that I won’t be the one correcting their erroneous snap judgments.