My grandmother dislikes Hollister

Hollister has always confused me.

There’s a couple reasons for this. Hollister stores are always dimly lit, to the point where it’s hard to see the clothes they’re trying to sell. They blast music, making it hard to hear anything. The employees are required to greet people with an awkward “Hey, what’s up,” regardless of the customer’s age. Still, Hollister is wildly popular among the tween population despite its ridiculously high prices. I’ve heard of middle schoolers getting bullied because they don’t wear Hollister clothes.

But what baffles me about Hollister the most is their shopping bags.

A typical Hollister shopping bag looks like this:

Which always makes me think this:

Recently, though, I did make a purchase at Hollister. (I admit it. They were having an awesome after-Christmas sale.) I got a pretty nice sweater. Pretty standard. Except they gave it to me in this bag:

I mean, there’s naked men… and then there’s naked men full-on making out. Yeesh. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I think it’s a bit much. I wasn’t the only one who thought so, either.

Or my dad:


Best of all was my dear ol’ grandmother, a tiny Vietnamese lady who’s nearly reached 90.

Oh my. Hollister is indeed a bit baffling like that. Interestingly enough, Hollister is really popular in Germany, despite touting even higher prices than America. There’s only 11 locations in Germany, though. My host sister noted that a typical German Hollister store has a huge line of people waiting to get in– testament to its popularity.