A2 · Elementary
10 min
retail cultureyouth cultureurban lifeeconomics
The Girls' Store: Claire's and the Death of the High Street
La tienda de las chicas: Claire's y la muerte de la calle comercial
This week, fashion chain Claire's closed all 154 of its UK and Ireland stores, costing 1,300 jobs. Fletcher and Octavio dig into what these stores meant for young people, mall culture, and the future of retail on the high street.
Esta semana, la cadena de moda Claire's cerró sus 154 tiendas en el Reino Unido e Irlanda, con la pérdida de 1.300 empleos. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre lo que significan estas tiendas para las jóvenes, la cultura del centro comercial y el futuro del comercio en las calles.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| tienda | store, shop | La tienda está cerrada hoy. |
| quiosco | kiosk, street stall | Compro el periódico en el quiosco de la calle. |
| cerrado | closed | Muchas tiendas están cerradas los domingos. |
| recuerdo | memory, souvenir | Tengo buenos recuerdos de ese lugar. |
| mercado | market | El mercado de la plaza vende frutas y verduras. |
| comercio | commerce, trade, business | El comercio en la calle principal está cambiando. |
Here's a small story that I think is actually a big story.
Claire's, the accessories chain, just shut every single one of its stores in the UK and Ireland.
A hundred and fifty-four locations, gone.
Thirteen hundred people out of work.
Claire's es una tienda para chicas jóvenes.
Claire's is a store for young girls.
Vende pendientes, pulseras, cosas así.
It sells earrings, bracelets, things like that.
Right, and I want to be clear that this is not a story about jewelry.
It's a story about a kind of place that existed in almost every shopping mall in the English-speaking world for about forty years, and now it's disappearing.
Claro.
Of course.
Las tiendas pequeñas tienen mucha historia.
Small stores have a lot of history.
Son importantes para la cultura.
They are important for culture.
Claire's was founded in Chicago in 1961.
By the 1990s, it was everywhere.
If you were a girl between about eight and sixteen in the US, the UK, Ireland, you knew Claire's.
It was the place where you got your ears pierced.
En España, hay tiendas similares.
In Spain, there are similar stores.
No es exactamente Claire's, pero sí, las chicas jóvenes tienen sus lugares especiales.
Not exactly Claire's, but yes, young girls have their special places.
What's interesting to me is that Claire's wasn't really selling products.
It was selling a ritual.
The ear piercing, the cheap glittery things you'd choose with your best friend, the particular smell of the place.
You know what I mean?
Sí.
Yes.
Las tiendas no son solo tiendas.
Stores are not just stores.
Son lugares para estar con amigos.
They are places to be with friends.
Exactly.
And this is the third time Claire's has gone bankrupt, by the way.
Third time.
They filed for Chapter 11 in the US in 2018, crawled back, and now the European operation has collapsed into administration again.
Tres veces es mucho.
Three times is a lot.
La tienda tiene problemas muy grandes.
The store has very big problems.
It does.
And the obvious explanation is online shopping.
Why go to the mall when you can order the same plastic butterfly clip for two dollars on your phone?
But I think that's only part of it.
Hoy, las chicas jóvenes compran en internet.
Today, young girls shop online.
No van a los centros comerciales.
They don't go to shopping centers.
But here's what I keep turning over in my head.
When I was reporting from Buenos Aires in the late nineties, the shopping mall was a genuinely new cultural phenomenon in South America.
Middle-class families went there on weekends like it was an outing.
A destination.
En España también.
In Spain too.
Los centros comerciales son muy populares.
Shopping centers are very popular.
Las familias van juntas.
Families go together.
So here's my question, Octavio.
Is the mall a specifically American invention that got exported?
Or did it tap into something universal about how people want to gather?
Bueno, en España tenemos mercados muy antiguos.
Well, in Spain we have very old markets.
El mercado es el lugar central de la ciudad.
The market is the central place of the city.
Es diferente al centro comercial americano.
It is different from the American shopping center.
That's the thing, isn't it.
The Spanish mercado, the covered market, the plaza mayor, these are social spaces first and commercial spaces second.
The American mall reversed that priority.
Sí.
Yes.
En el mercado español, la gente habla mucho.
In the Spanish market, people talk a lot.
Conoces al vendedor.
You know the seller.
Es personal.
It is personal.
Claire's is the opposite of that.
It's anonymous, it's mass-produced, it's the same store in Dublin as in Denver.
And yet, and this is the tension I want to sit with, it still managed to create a genuine cultural moment for a generation of young women.
Claro.
Of course.
Las chicas tienen buenos recuerdos de Claire's.
Girls have good memories of Claire's.
Eso es importante para la cultura.
That is important for culture.
I talked to my daughter about this, actually.
She grew up in Austin, and she described getting her ears pierced at Claire's when she was nine as, and I'm quoting, "a whole thing." Like a ceremony.
Her mother, her grandmother, her best friend all went together.
Eso es muy bonito.
That is very beautiful.
Los ritos son importantes.
Rituals are important.
La primera vez es especial siempre.
The first time is always special.
And now where does that ritual happen?
On an app?
With a TikTok tutorial?
I'm not being nostalgic, I'm genuinely asking what replaces it.
Hoy los jóvenes comparten sus cosas en Instagram.
Today young people share their things on Instagram.
Es diferente, pero también es un rito.
It is different, but it is also a ritual.
That's a fair point.
The ritual moved online.
But there's something that gets lost when the physical space disappears.
You can't smell Instagram.
You can't run into your neighbor's kid at Instagram.
Tienes razón.
You are right.
El espacio físico es diferente.
The physical space is different.
La tienda real tiene algo especial.
The real store has something special.
And this connects to something bigger.
The high street in Britain, the calle comercial in Spain, these were community infrastructure.
Not just where you bought things.
Where you bumped into people.
Where the city breathed.
En Madrid, muchas tiendas pequeñas están cerradas ahora.
In Madrid, many small stores are closed now.
Las calles están diferentes.
The streets are different.
Es un poco triste.
It is a little sad.
A little sad is doing some heavy lifting there.
I walked down a high street in Birmingham two years ago while I was doing a piece on post-Brexit economic shifts, and there were more empty shopfronts than occupied ones.
It looked like a film set after the production wrapped.
Es el problema de internet.
It is the problem of the internet.
Amazon vende todo más barato.
Amazon sells everything cheaper.
Las tiendas pequeñas no pueden competir.
Small stores cannot compete.
But Claire's isn't a small independent store.
It's a massive chain.
So it's not just the little guys who can't compete.
Even the chains that replaced the little guys are now being replaced themselves.
Sí.
Yes.
Es un ciclo.
It is a cycle.
Primero las tiendas grandes matan las tiendas pequeñas.
First the big stores kill the small stores.
Ahora internet mata las tiendas grandes.
Now the internet kills the big stores.
That is a beautifully grim summary.
And you know what, it raises a question about cultural identity.
If a whole generation's shared experience of, say, getting your first piece of jewelry was tied to a specific kind of commercial space, and that space vanishes, what happens to the shared memory?
Los recuerdos no desaparecen.
Memories do not disappear.
Pero los lugares sí.
But places do.
Los hijos de hoy tienen recuerdos diferentes.
Today's children have different memories.
Different isn't necessarily worse, I'll grant you that.
But there's a texture to growing up in a place with physical anchors that I think we undervalue until they're gone.
My daughter doesn't need Claire's.
But she remembers it.
There's a difference.
Claro.
Of course.
Los lugares son parte de nuestra identidad.
Places are part of our identity.
La tienda, el parque, la plaza.
The store, the park, the plaza.
Son importantes para crecer.
They are important for growing up.
Let me ask you something.
When you were a kid in Madrid, was there an equivalent?
A specific kind of place that was just for young people, that your parents weren't really part of?
Sí, el quiosco.
Yes, the kiosk.
El quiosco de la calle vende cómics, dulces, revistas.
The street kiosk sells comics, sweets, magazines.
Es el lugar de los niños.
It is the place for children.
The street kiosk.
There's something about that, being outside, on the street, part of the city rather than inside an air-conditioned box.
That feels fundamentally different to me.
Sí.
Yes.
En España, la vida es en la calle.
In Spain, life is in the street.
El bar, el mercado, el quiosco.
The bar, the market, the kiosk.
Todo está fuera.
Everything is outside.
And the mall, Claire's included, was the American answer to a culture that had already moved indoors.
Which maybe explains why it never fully took root in Spain the way it did in the UK or Ireland.
Hay centros comerciales en España, claro.
There are shopping centers in Spain, of course.
Pero la calle comercial todavía existe.
But the commercial street still exists.
La gente todavía va a las tiendas pequeñas.
People still go to small stores.
Which might be why Spain has been somewhat more resilient on this front than Britain.
The infrastructure of street life, the culture of actually going outside and being in a city, that's a kind of protection the UK never quite had.
Puede ser.
Maybe.
Pero en Madrid también hay tiendas cerradas.
But in Madrid there are also closed stores.
El problema es en todas partes.
The problem is everywhere.
Fair enough.
And look, the thirteen hundred people who lost their jobs at Claire's this week are not abstract.
Those are real people, real livelihoods.
That part of the story deserves more than it gets.
Sí.
Yes.
Mil trescientas personas sin trabajo.
Thirteen hundred people without work.
Eso es un problema muy serio.
That is a very serious problem.
No es solo una tienda.
It is not just a store.
Before we finish, I want to ask you about something you said earlier.
You used the word quiosco, and it stuck with me.
Is it quiosco or kiosco?
Because I've seen both and I've been too embarrassed to ask.
Las dos formas son correctas.
Both forms are correct.
Pero quiosco es más común en España.
But quiosco is more common in Spain.
Kiosco también existe.
Kiosco also exists.
Both correct, quiosco more common in Spain.
What I like is that the word itself traveled, it came from Turkish, through French, and ended up in Spanish and English as kiosk.
The same journey as a lot of the things sold inside one.
Sí, el español tiene muchas palabras del árabe, del francés, del inglés.
Yes, Spanish has many words from Arabic, from French, from English.
El idioma viaja también.
The language also travels.
The language travels.
That might be the line of the episode.
And on that note, I should mention that we've been using tienda for store throughout, but I've also heard comercio.
Are those the same?
Tienda es más simple.
Tienda is simpler.
Una tienda es un lugar donde compras cosas.
A tienda is a place where you buy things.
El comercio es más general.
El comercio is more general.
Es el acto de comprar y vender.
It is the act of buying and selling.
So tienda is the building, comercio is the activity.
That's actually a useful distinction.
In English we kind of blur those together.
A store, a business, commerce, we use them almost interchangeably in casual speech.
Sí, el inglés mezcla muchas cosas.
Yes, English mixes a lot of things.
En español somos más precisos.
In Spanish we are more precise.
A veces.
Sometimes.
"More precise.
Sometimes." I'm going to put that on a t-shirt and sell it at a quiosco.
Thanks, Octavio.