Limited Too Is Being Restored to Its Former Glory

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

The sparkliest store in the mall in the 1990s is about to make an unlikely return to retail. The New York Post reports that Bluestar Alliance purchased tween destination Limited Too from private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, which owns The Limited. The plan is to bring Limited Too merchandise to department stores for a fall 2016 launch. But new Limited Too stores are in the works too.

"We are going to bring it all back," Bluestar Alliance co-owner Ralph Gindi told the New York Post. Gindi wants to open up to 200 stores over the next five years. Bluestar Alliance's current brands include Nanette Lepore, Kooba, and Catherine Malandrino.

Limited Too began in 1987 as spinoff of The Limited offering children's clothes, but it really took off when the company focused on glittery clothing and tchotchkes for pre-teen girls. In fact, Limited Too claimed to be instrumental in the invention of the "tween fashion category." The brand was criticized, though, by the likes of Slate for selling message T-shirts with phrases like "I Left My Brain in My Locker" and "I Only Shop on Days that End in Y."

At its height, there were 600 Limited Too stores. But by 2008, Tween Brands converted all 560 Limited Too mall shops into Justice stores, a lower-priced pre-teen line. Limited Too's time had passed, according to Tween Brands, which said in a statement in 2008, "Our customers are looking for the next great thing, and their parents want more value for their dollar." Now, almost a decade later, Bluestar Alliance is betting that the time is right for Limited Too's comeback.