Glamour Shots

Jack Counts Jr., an Oklahoma City entrepreneur, got his start in the 1960s photographing University of Oklahoma fraternity parties and selling the results as "Party Pics." He first tried the makeover-portrait concept under the name "Fantasy Faces" in Oklahoma City, then opened the first Glamour Shots store in Dallas in 1988 — and the formula caught fire in malls across America.

The experience was theatrical from start to finish: a full makeover with big hair, heavy eye shadow, and white satin gloves; outfit changes heavy on sequins and leather; soft-focus, filtered, waist-up shots; and the instant gratification of seeing your proofs on a video screen before you left the store. The sitting fee was the cheap bait — the packages were where the money lived, with customers typically spending $200 to $300. By the mid-1990s more than 350 stores were operating, with international licensees, and in 1996 the chain hit $100 million in sales with 6,000 employees.

Then fashion moved on. The look that felt aspirational in 1992 read as a punchline by the decade's end, and most locations folded by the early 2000s — 93 stores remained in 2001, and just five by 2019. The brand's long goodbye finally ended in early 2026, when the last mall location, at Freehold Raceway Mall in New Jersey, closed in February — and the final standalone studio, in El Paso, followed weeks later. The photographs outlived the stores: the soft-focus glow, the wind-machine hair, the boa slipping off one shoulder became visual shorthand for the entire era — lovingly mocked, endlessly recreated, and secretly treasured in a million family albums.