dELiA*s has filed for bankruptcy. Abercrombie & Fitch/Hollister is in trouble.

A comment thread about Zara in rednikki's LJ reminded me that I'd been putting together a post about fast fashion chains like H&M and Forever 21 pushing specialty teen clothing retailers out of business.

From The New York Times' Dealbook blog:

Unable to find a buyer or arrange a financial lifeline, Delia’s said on Friday that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and seek to close all its stores and distribution centers. The company said it would aim to run going-out-of-business sales.

...

On Friday, Delia’s warned its shareholders that it “does not anticipate any value will remain from the bankruptcy estate.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

Delia’s news followed the bankruptcy filing Thursday by Deb Shops, whose 300 stores also were booming in the 1990s.

“When there’s one of these guys that’s kind of sick, it tends to infect all these guys,” Paul Lejuez, a Wells Fargo Securities analyst, said of the hypercompetitive environment teen retail environment.

From MarketWatch:

Teen retailers like Delia’s have struggled to compete with fast fashion players like H&M and pure online retailers that cater to millennial shoppers who increasingly do all their buying on the Web.

And from Business Insider:

But Eric Beder, specialty apparel analyst at Wunderlich Securities, said he believes Abercrombie is running out of options.

"What is going to turn the tide?" Beder asked in a note to clients. "Frankly, we have no idea."

Beder notes that Abercrombie has already exhausted numerous turnaround strategies, to no avail.

"Abercrombie has already aggressively closed domestic locations, cut back on inventories, shifted away from logo products, and cut costs," Beder writes.

The once-leading teen retailer has struggled to stay relevant since the surge in demand for fast-fashion brands like Forever 21 and H&M.

One of my fraternity siblings in Manhattan has a roommate who's in the industry and claims that "everything is fast fashion now". My friend and I agree this is hyperbole but there is clearly a sense in which fast fashion is setting the pace.

It's just a thought, but an overdose of fast fashion may be one driver behind the rise of vintage.

There are a lot of reasons to like Iceland.

One of the more obscure reasons is that they like coming up with wacky phrase guides. I remember frotz and tb showing me about one that included English to Icelandic translations of phrases like "I am a Viking!" and "You are cute!"

This post from Iceland Magazine came out a few months ago, but is still worth a look if you haven't seen it:

10 Useless Icelandic phrases you should not bother to learn:

While visiting Iceland it's useful to know some key phrases in Icelandic, like góðan dag/good day, takk fyrir/thank you and matseðilinn takk/the menu please. Then you have some you should not bother with. Here are ten.

It then lists the phrases, first in Icelandic, then in English. Each has an explanation of why the phrase is useless. Finally, there is a Mixcloud audio clip you can play to perfect your pronunciation of phrases you are not supposed to bother learning.

This is a particular kind of droll Icelandic humor I really appreciate.