Lucky Brand Jeans Closing, Ridgeland, MS

Today's post highlights Madison County, MS, retail.

After an absence from the blog in August (during which I instead was invited over to My Florida Retail for a Q+A session on Aldi's purchase of the Winn-Dixie and Harveys chains from Southeastern Grocers), I am back today with one of (hopefully) two very quick posts for you guys this month. It is September, which means the temperatures are getting cooler -- granted, here in Ridgeland all "cooler" means is 90 degrees as opposed to 108, but still -- and fall is on its way. Fall is my favorite season, and, despite all the encroachment from Halloween and Christmas already, I am excited to celebrate it. Today I put on my favorite pair of Lucky Brand Jeans, and that made me think of the photoset I took a few years ago at the Ridgeland store (before I moved here!) when it was liquidating. So, in that spirit, I thought I'd go ahead and finally share those photos with y'all today. As their jeans say: "lucky you"!

The Ridgeland Lucky store was located in Renaissance at Colony Park, an outdoor lifestyle center featuring a mix of upscale and local retailers and restaurants. Examples include Apple (soon to relocate to a new spot within the same center, actually), Barnes & Noble (the most consistently busy one I've ever seen in my life), and Hallmark (the subject of a future blog post...), among others. There are some vacancies, but nothing too alarming. Lucky's departure came as a result of the company's bankruptcy announcement in 2020; Ridgeland was one of 13 stores immediately selected for closure, which implies to me it must not have done great business. Today, the only Lucky store in Mississippi is an outlet location at Tanger in Southaven.

Heading inside the store, this is it -- the entire salesfloor. Compared to the Southaven outlet location, with which I am much more familiar, Ridgeland struck me as extremely tiny... but then again, perhaps that's typical for their regular/full-line stores. The aesthetic, at least, was similar to what I'm used to from Southaven.

Looking over to the right-side wall, then to the left. Lucky sells both women's and men's apparel, but as you can imagine, women's has a greater selection -- hence, the registers are placed in the center of the left-hand wall, breaking the men's department into two. Women's, on the other hand, spans the entire right-hand wall. I like the American flag decor behind the registers, as well as the pendant lights above.

Looking straight towards the back of the store. In my experience, it is a typical clothing store layout to have the fitting rooms lined up in a singular row hidden behind a "false" back wall, which is exactly what we see here. Even though the walls are almost entirely white, that is not to say they are bland, as I really like the texture added by the wood, moulding, and -- especially -- that unique ceiling. I know some have mixed opinions on concrete floors, but I think the stained concrete here plays nicely with all of those other elements, too.

In the middle of the store, facing towards the back, were these two cool leather chairs. The Southaven outlet store has similar distressed leather couches (which are extremely comfy, by the way!), so I was surprised this much smaller store managed to fit some similar seating in! I'm assuming this is a common Lucky Brand store trait, and I definitely like it -- I would have loved to have purchased something like this for my apartment, but alas, I don't believe the fixtures were for sale quite yet (plus, who knows how expensive they would've been, lol).

Speaking of fixtures -- also take note of the tables behind the chairs. Those are of a unique style, too, and really zero in on the "vintage" vibe Lucky seems to be curating here.

A look at women's apparel in the back right corner, and men's in the back left (well -- men's, plus women's shoes, anyway). These sections were joined by some various posters showing off either generic Lucky Brand imagery (models and locales), or specific jean types (the men's jeans posters were in the front of the store).

I'm curious: do y'all like to wear jeans? They are by far my favorite type of clothing, as long as they are comfortable enough (which may be part of why I like a brand like Lucky, lol). But besides those who prefer shorts, it seems there are a lot of people these days who simply prefer sweatpants or leggings or the like. Where do you fall?

One final shot of the store shows us men's sale denim in the very back, adjacent to the fitting rooms (notice the black-painted wall as opposed to the white walls out in the salesfloor proper). As a Very Thrifty Individual™, you can rest assured that the only jeans I ever purchase from Lucky are from the clearance section, haha! And even with this store's liquidation sales of 30 to 50 percent off, I did not purchase anything on this visit.

Notice the fixtures in stores like this are designed to maximize storage space, and therefore increase the salesfloor and decrease the stockroom: beneath each of the stair steps are pull-out drawers to hold more stock. I've pointed out similar arrangements at other such stores we've visited on the blog, such as the Rockport at Tanger Outlets Southaven.

About a month into its bankruptcy, Lucky successfully sold its business to Sparc Group, the 50-50 partnership between Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group, which have snapped up a number of other ailing brands in recent years. Since then, it appears to have been business as usual for the chain -- lucky, indeed.

That's it for this short post; as I mentioned, keep your eyes out for another one later this month, if all goes well. Until then and as always, thanks for reading, and have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

Retail Retell