Clothing & Apparel

Casual Corner was a mall mainstay of women's clothing, dressing working women in career separates, dresses, and coordinated outfits across hundreds of shopping-center stores along with its sister brands Petite Sophisticate and August Max Woman. As fast fashion and specialty rivals reshaped mall apparel, Casual Corner lost its footing. The chain was sold and its stores were liquidated in 2005.

George Romanta Kinney founded the shoe chain that bore his name in 1894, building one of America's largest family-shoe retailers with affordable footwear in downtowns and malls nationwide. Owned by Woolworth for most of the 20th century, Kinney spawned the wildly successful Foot Locker spinoff. In 1998 Woolworth — by then refocusing entirely on athletic retail under the Venator/Foot Locker banner — abruptly closed all Kinney Shoes and Footaction stores.

Merry-Go-Round Enterprises sold trendy, of-the-moment clothing to teens and young adults through mall chains including Chess King, Cignal, and Dejaiz, riding the fashions of the 1980s and early '90s. The company rode fads hard — and when youth tastes shifted away from its flashy looks and a major acquisition went sour, it stumbled fast. Merry-Go-Round filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its hundreds of stores in 1996.

Wet Seal began in Southern California in 1962 and grew into a national fast-fashion chain aimed at teen and young-women shoppers, with trendy, inexpensive clothing in malls across the country. It thrived in the 1990s and 2000s but was hit hard as teen tastes fragmented and online and fast-fashion rivals surged. After repeated losses and store closures, Wet Seal filed for bankruptcy and shut its remaining stores in 2017.