Glamour Shots once dominated the mall. The photo studio had 350 locations in shopping centers during its heyday in the 1990s, where its mostly female clientele booked back-to-back makeovers and photo shoot sessions. It was the spot for mothers to bring their young daughters for a professional portrait and for girlfriends and wives to go for wallet-size photos to gift their significant others. With just two storefronts remaining, it’s now a relic.

New Jersey’s Freehold Raceway Mall is the only mall storefront of Glamour Shots still in existence; the other Glamour Shots location is a standalone business in El Paso, Texas. On Black Friday, I ventured to central New Jersey to see what was left of the photo empire.

I had called Glamour Shots a few days prior to book the appointment. I opted for the full experience of getting my hair and makeup done there before having my photos taken. The outfits — they recommended three — I had to bring myself.

“What are you looking to get photos taken for?” the person I spoke to asked. I replied that I needed updated business headshots and some social media lifestyle photos. I wasn’t sure what else someone my age (31) would come in for.

I never went to Glamour Shots as a kid — I was born in 1994 after all, about when the brand hit its peak, so its popularity and appeal had passed me by. And as a "zillennial," I know I need only go through my Instagram filters if I want an impossibly glam photo of myself — for free. My 40-something colleague, on the other hand, remembers going as a preteen, where she emerged with beauty queen curls, a face full of makeup and an array of formal, mostly sequined jackets and wraps to don for the soft-focus photos that followed. Later, she and her classmates who’d also gone exchanged photos, some of which her mother still has on display.

I had to see what the hype was about — and figure out who was still going to Glamour Shots and how it’s changed in the nearly 40 years since it was founded by entrepreneur Jack Counts Jr. And so I headed to the mall.

‘You’re a natural’

Stepping into Glamour Shots was a bit like stepping back in time. Each wall of the place was covered by framed portraits and family photos featuring the brand’s signature soft-focus effect. Employees dressed in all black were standing behind two PCs at the front, keeping busy. At 1 p.m. on Black Friday, I was the only customer there.

A young man introduced himself as my photographer for the session and let me know what to expect over the next few hours. I was led to the makeup station, where my makeup artist asked what look I was going for. “I want to look like myself, but just a bit enhanced,” I told her. Both the photographer and makeup artist liked how my hair looked when I came in and said there wasn’t much that needed to be done. No ‘80s blowout for me, then.

Online, memories of Glamour Shots skew toward excess. “My hair was SO high in mine,” one person commented in a thread on Reddit. “I had to scrape my makeup off afterwards,” wrote another.

In contrast, my natural waves were hardly touched aside from smoothing out a couple of the front pieces. My makeup wasn’t overwhelmingly cakey, but it wasn’t exactly natural, either. I had concealer spackled around the center of my face, rogue contour placed toward the back of my cheekbone, a smoky eye and dark eyebrows that didn’t suit my face. The people-pleaser in me said I was happy with it. Really, I was just submitting to the process.

Close to an hour later, I was moved upstairs to the tiny space where the magic was set to happen. In a modern world of green screens and AI-generated backgrounds, it was striking to see how many backdrops were readily available to transform the little room that the photographer had to work with. A white backdrop was lowered, and a wooden stool was placed in front of it. Roughly 13 years since my last school photo, I was brought back to picture day.

“Sit on the stool at a diagonal, use the footrest closest to the camera and place your hand on the opposite edge,” the photographer directed me while mimicking the pose himself. It was my time to shine. “You’re a natural,” he told me, while my makeup artist lingered nearby to hype me up. Even so, it felt less like praise than standard operating procedure.

The promise of Glamour Shots

My Glamour Shots experience lasted just over two hours from start to finish, including a 10-minute wait to have the photos uploaded onto a computer so I could select my favorites. I did this with the store’s owner, Cliff Eng.

He’s worked for Glamour Shots since 1998, first holding a managerial position before buying three New Jersey locations. He’s discouraged that Freehold is the only surviving one of the batch, and even this mall location could be closing by the end of January, he tells me. They’re in the middle of contract negotiations now.

The issue is “the lack of clients,” Eng says. “People now have cellphones with an average of 1,000 photos on them, making photography not as important to them.” As someone with over 100,000 photos and videos in my iPhone library myself, I’d argue that it’s not that photography isn’t important anymore; it’s just much more accessible now. Even the signature retouching of Glamour Shots photos, which conceals all pores and perceived imperfections, can now be achieved instantly and in the palm of your hand.

But the lore of the brand might have never been so much the photos themselves, but rather the whole adventure. “A lot of women remember coming in when they were younger and having an unforgettable experience,” says Eng.

Kelly Flaherty, 42, was 9 years old when she was brought into a Glamour Shots in northern Virginia. “My mom just thought it would be fun to allow me to get some pictures,” she tells Yahoo. “I remember getting to pick out the clothes and accessories with my mom and the photographer. I was very excited for the earrings that you see in my picture. … I thought they were just the most beautiful things I had ever seen.”

Having her hair and makeup done, and posing in a leather jacket made her feel like a grown-up. In fact, “it felt too grown-up then,” she says. Nevertheless, “The pictures are fun, colorful and silly. They’re a great time capsule of my childhood.”

Lauren Steif, 37, also has childhood memories of the studio. “My visits spanned the golden age of Glamour Shots in the early to mid-1990s,” she tells Yahoo, noting that her mom brought her when she was both in preschool and in fifth grade. During the first visit, she was outfitted with pink feathers and clip-on earrings. “I had a little pageboy haircut at the time because my mom didn't want to deal with long hair, and they made it look more girly in these photos, which I am thankful for,” says Steif. For her second session, she put on a black leather dress that had to be clamped from the back to fit her. “I had started my slow march toward preadolescent awkwardness by that age, so I don't think the photos were as good as the earlier ones.”

Again, it was less about the photographic keepsakes and more about the opportunity to “indulge in that experience,” she says.

What Shanna Bradford, now 49, recalls most about getting her high school graduation photos done at a Glamour Shots in 1995 was the opportunity to get dolled up to look like her favorite actress. “The Halle Berry haircut was the trend [along with] light blends of soft color eye shadow, clear gloss with a hint of warm chocolate lip liner, black mascara and all-over bronzer. It was the perfect look for me,” she tells Yahoo. “They had a promotional package that included everything — hair, makeup and clothing for $199. It was the best decision that I made.”

Rite of passage

Though I didn’t feel the same about my experience, I realize through chatting with these women and reading through a handful of others’ reflections why it feels so different 30 years later. Yes, technology has advanced to a place where the retouching services and immediate access to the photos are no longer as impressive as they once were. Sure, the aesthetic itself feels outdated (I received sepia-tone versions of some of my photos, reminiscent of what I could do myself on the Photo Booth app or a digital camera by the time I was 10), and the cost in both time and money (an average sale at the New Jersey location I went to is $500) is steep. But ultimately, the cultural significance simply isn’t the same.

While Gen X-ers yearned for permission to wear a lipstick that made them appear beyond their years, today’s tweens are already shopping at Sephora. And if seeing a friend’s Glamour Shot photo on display in their parents’ house was enviable back then, it has nothing on the feeling teens get now when posting a photo on Instagram and seeing the likes roll in.

As for my own experience, trying on adulthood isn’t something that I need to do at 31; I’m already there. The opportunity that Glamour Shots once provided to mark a moment of becoming a young woman was long gone by the time I came along.