In the Realm of Polyester

Months ago, I posted a picture of a building site on Kärntner Straße, with a sign announcing that a Forever21 store was supposed to open there. Well, that one still hasn't opened, but an even bigger one (I think...) on Mariahilfer Str. opened some weeks ago. Yesterday, I finally got around to checking it out. Interestingly enough, I never came across one of their shops in the U.S. and only found out about it from YouTube make-up gurus raving about it. When I was in Tokyo, I found a very small branch, but did not buy anything. As the name suggests, I am almost twice as old as their target group and there are two things I noticed. 99.9 % of the stock seems to be made out of polyester or other manmade fibres and all the skirts, dresses, shorts are very mini. This is the Mariahilfer Str. store from outside:
I ended up buying one of the few items that fell within the 0.1 % natural fibre range, a very nice beachy minidress (to be worn on top of shorts or trousers, needless to say) with embroidery and a set of 4 wood/bakelite bangles, two of which I already wore yesterday:

I doubt that this will become my favourite place for a lunchtime-spree. Although I know well that it's hypocritical to assume expensive clothes might not be produced under equally ethically questionable conditions as cheap rags, walking through this store and looking at badly stitched clothes made me think of sweatshops more than anything else. New Yorker and Pimkie are haute couture designers in comparison.