Forever 21 and 3:16
I’ve never shopped at Forever 21 (truly, I’m not the target audience as you can see from the picture below), but I didn’t realize just how true that was until recently.
Students of mine are doing research on the value-priced clothing store Forever 21 and they told me something that was fairly shocking. On the bottom of all Forever 21 bags, it says “John 3:16″. I couldn’t believe it so I went to the store myself and asked for a bag. There is was!
I went online and evidently this has been going on for about 5 years (at least in the blogosphere). I also went to Forever 21’s website and while they do not promote their evangelicalism they do have a line of clothing for “extended sized” women called Faith 21.
I don’t know if this is suggesting that you need more faith when you are larger or if you need faith to help lose weight (something written about extensively here). In either case, it seems like an odd name for a brand extension.
I can only wonder how many Jews or atheists or Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims in NYC know about this evangelical connection when walk through the store on 14th Street….and what other “secular” retailers have an evangelical mission that we don’t know about.