Wet Seal
The juniors racks where a going-out top cost almost nothing and lasted one dance. Wet Seal was fast fashion for teenage girls — trend pieces bought cheap, worn once, and replaced next weekend. The 2000s mall uniform came off these racks.
Wet Seal began in 1962 in Newport Beach, California, as Lorne's, founded by Lorne Huycke. The famous name came from a quip: at a fashion show, Huycke's wife remarked that a model in a bathing suit looked like "a wet seal." The company operated as Lorne's for nearly three decades before incorporating as Wet Seal in 1990, and the new identity came with a sharpened mission — cheap, fast-turning fashion for teenage girls.
In 1995 Wet Seal acquired Contempo Casuals, a 237-store chain, and converted the whole fleet to the Wet Seal name by 2001, cementing its place among the mall's biggest teen-fashion names. At its peak the company ran 540 locations, and as late as 2014 it still had 478 Wet Seal stores plus 54 Arden B locations across 48 states and Puerto Rico — racks of camis, minis, and denim priced for allowance money.
The collapse was fast even by retail-apocalypse standards. Wet Seal filed for Chapter 11 on January 16, 2015; on January 27, 2017, it closed every store at once. The brand sold to Gordon Brothers for $3 million and went online-only — an abrupt end for the chain that dressed a generation of school dances, one clearance-priced top at a time.
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