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Trivia Quizzes

Fake-or-Fact Friday: Weird Shopping Edition

August 8, 2014

What follows are three stories about clothing stores doing outlandish things to sell more product. Two of them are honest-to-goodness real, and the third one we made up. Can you tell which one is the fake? The answer is revealed at the end of the post.

A.

A plus-size clothing store is testing out a new concept at a soon-to-be-open store in London. Changing rooms will be outfitted with speakers that, if customers opt in, will play a prerecorded loop of compliments as they try on clothes. Among the self-esteem (and sales) boosting messages: “Girl, you look flawless,” “You’re a goddess on the inside and out,” and “Those shorts would look amazing with a logo tee.”

B.

The fashion industry has often been criticized for using too-skinny models that promote an unrealistic standard of beauty. Also troubling: how a garment looks on a model is probably a lot different than how it looks on a regular person. Solution: more “realistic” mannequins. A Chicago-based clothing company has introduced mannequins for use in its stores that instead of standing upright with good posture, are hunched over in “slouchy, casual poses” so the clothes look more like they would in the real world.

C.

A family clothing store in the San Francisco area has decided to bring back the bathroom attendant. But instead of hanging out in the restroom to dispense towels, mints, and cologne, the store is using them in fitting rooms and calling them “Changing Room Concierges.” The employees wait in the rooms and are there to hold clothing as customers try new things on, or can go fetch a different size of the garment from the sales floor, for example. Oh, and as soon as someone comes into their assigned fitting room, the concierges are required to put on a blindfold.

Want more fake facts? Then check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)