Here are my retail thoughts. Sorry, it's a long reply.
Banana Republic. YES. I'm excited to see them go back to their early roots! I LOVED the BR of old, it had a sense of adventure and romance that had a sort of 1930s-40s flair, even though it was the 1990s. It was way beyond my price range at the time, though. BR's offerings echoed the popular adventure films of the 80s, such the Indiana Jones franchise, Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile, even a little bit of The Goonies.
If you had the money, you could go to Banana Republic and buy a leather bomber jacket that told the world "My other car is a waterplane", or a pair of heavy chinos that quietly broadcast that you were about to go on an archaeological dig that could involve a treasure map and international espionage with Nazis.
I've been seeing BR items pop up all the time in thrift stores, for at least the past five years, and it's usually in very good-to-excellent or new-with-tags condition, so I'm not sure what's happening there. Last fall I thrifted a black, slim-cut men's blazer that looks and feels like velvet but turned out to be the finest corduroy I've ever seen on a garment. Made in Italy. Flawless, but had fallen off a hanger and vanished under a rack. I found it when I picked up a blouse I knocked off a hanger. Took it home, had it dry-cleaned, and the BF loves it.
I have only ever found two truly vintage, old-school BR items secondhand. One was a suede safari-style dress, which was a little too small, so I resold it. The other is a gorgeous heavy skirt in the most buttery dark brown suede, with a black lace trim. I kept that. I won't ever get rid of it. Both of those finds were almost a decade ago, and I've never come across anything like it since.
My distinct impression now, is that they're going toe-to-toe with Ralph Lauren, particularly the LAUREN Ralph Lauren line. Even their photo sets and lighting look like copies of Ralph Lauren, if you look at both websites.
Dying Downtown Retail: I rarely go to malls anymore, so I don't know. But I suspect that yes, that is probably the case in Atlanta, because real estate and rents have been consistently going up up up for the past 5 years. These days, I imagine any Atlanta store not actually inside a mall would have to really be on the ball, and know their market, and not just throw spaghetti at the wall with the offerings.
I went to the big mall near me a few months, North Point Mall, which historically has always been considered "one of the good malls", to pick up something I bought online at Macy's. It was a Saturday mid-morning, and the parking lots were largely empty. I didn't go into the rest of the mall.
Online Shopping: If I'm looking for something I can't or won't thrift/consign (underpinnings and hosiery falling into this category), I usually order online. This is directly related to your next category, Angie, about MUCH Less Stock. I find it vaguely irritating to have to go into multiple stores to find something as simple as undergarments, loungewear, athletic gear or hosiery in my size (S or 5), or even basic, unembellished tees that are made of natural fibers. Even when I'm in a retail store (not secondhand), looking at items, I still pull up reviews online. Why waste the time? I can just order online, and I've had a pretty good success rate with my online purchases.
Increased Prices: So... in the US, I can remember as far back as the late 1980s and early 1990s, that clothing was expensive. This was when minimum wage was under $5. Even at Wal-Mart, in 1992, I could expect to pay at least $22 for a basic white cotton ladies' t-shirt in Florida.
This started to change with the NAFTA, and prices seemed to come down a bit. But where I really seemed to see apparel prices drop drastically was the early 2000s. Everything in the US had "Made in China" labels. The materials and workmanship were still better quality than now, but it seems like quality just bottomed out by about 2010 and hasn't ever really come back.
I don't know what's really driving prices back up - if it's the pandemic, if it's the shift towards being more environmentally conscious of climate change, if it's better wages for garment workers (wouldn't that be great?), if it's politics and wars, or if it's the apparel companies just getting greedy.
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Something that just popped into my head, as I was about to submit my reply is this..
Going to the mall used to be a social activity in its own right. I remember in the 1990s and into the early 2000s, my friends and I would call each other and say, "Let's go to the mall and grab lunch". Then we would window-shop for a few hours, and usually at least one of us would buy something. The Mall was a scene. So maybe it wasn't just that online retail is bringing down brick-and-mortar... I think the internet has altogether changed the map of how we socialize now.
