posted: 25 October, 2019

Welcome to ThisIsRetail, your weekly look at some of the more diverse and unexpected stuff influencing the way we buy, sell, and consume in the 21st century.

So it’s Halloween again and Americans are set to spend some $9 billion on Halloween merch this year, a significant portion of which goes to just one company, Rubies Costume Co., the world’s largest manufacturer and designer of costumes, purveyors of Princess Elsa dresses, Batman cloaks, and, weirdly, Sexy Bert & Ernie (from Sesame Street) outfits among many, many more.

To bandwagon all this seasonal spookiness, we’ll be exploring the reanimation of dead brands of yesteryear, the increasingly desolate alternate dimension that is the shopping mall, and daring to peek at how Goth lumbers on, zombie-like in its relentless opposition to whatever counts as mainstream (you and me, most likely).

Good Lord, deliver us!

🧠 💀 Joseph 🧟‍♂️ 👻

• Stranger Things
  An Unexpected Requiem for the American Shopping Mall.
  [Vox]

• Zombie Brands
  The Science Behind Undead Icons.
  [Huffington Post]

• Woke the Dead
  “Appropriating” Witchcraft Lands Sephora and Urban Outfitters in Hubble-Bubble.
  [Vox]

• Dolls Kill
  Introducing the Unofficial Brand of the TikTok e-girl.
  [Glossy]

• Cruel Irony
  Guy Fawkes Masks Popularised by Anonymous Protesters Swell Profits at Warner Bros.
  [New York Times]

• Goth at 40
  The Enduring Appeal of Bleakness and Black Lipstick.
  [Washington Post]

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