Target courts millennial women with Delia’s collection—a blast from the era of 1990s catalogs

Target Corporation is big time baiting millennial women with a new clothing drop. 

The latest brand to hit the chain’s rack is none other than the once-famous Delia’s, a 1990s and 2000s clothing company designed for teens and young women, which went out of business in 2014. 

Now that it seems to have resurrected itself at Target stores, the original Delia’s fan girls are filing in.

If you’re a millennial woman, then you are almost certainly familiar with the Delia’s brand. If not, it was a mega-popular clothing company that started in catalog form in 1993 before branching out to physical stores in 1999. 

If you didn’t live in an area that had a Delia’s, or you came of age before the stores popped up in shopping malls, then you likely ordered the old-fashioned way: from the catalog—like an OG.

Catalog dreams

Catalog ordering seems like an ancient and inefficient way to shop these days, but back in the 1900s, it was kind of a vibe. 

Teen girls of the era spent hours circling their favorite trendy checkered pants, butterfly hair clips, whimsical t-shirts, and babydoll dresses, then dutifully calling their friends on party lines (the original group chat) to make sure no one was getting the same garb.

You’d place your order by mailing in a little slip with a check or your parent’s credit card information or calling it in directly. 

Sure, you’d have to wait an ungodly amount of time for your items in the mail by today’s standards. Still, there was no beating the excitement when your Delia’s package arrived in the mail. 

Delia’s was massively popular before its eventual decline, which happened mostly due to shifting styles and a failure to move toward online ordering. 

A social media win

At the height of Delia’s demand, the catalog showed up in the mailboxes of around 55 million teens across the country each year.

And those faithful Delia’s girlies are watching Target’s latest drop closely. To make the experience even more nostalgic, some Target stores will even receive catalogs to give to shoppers, the retailer told NBC Chicago.

“Shut upppppppppppp. Is there a catalog so I can circle everything and make my mom mad when I hand it to her?” one popular comment reads. 

In another similar video, a wide-eyed TikTik user gives her followers a glimpse of the clothing items. The text overlay on the video reads, “My 90’s Delia’s dream closet just exploded into Target stores.” 

On social media, there is certainly no shortage of millennials posting about the new clothing drop. Still, some expressed skepticism toward Target’s ability to fully recapture the joy of Delia’s catalog ordering.

“Excuse me I had to order Delia’s from a catalog 20 years ago not go to Target,” one user playfully wrote. 

Either way, no one seems to actually be complaining about the brand showing up at Target. However, the clothing drop comes as the chain is still recovering from a recent fiasco. 

About a year after Target was hit with boycotts over dropping its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the brand removed a Halloween costume that many felt closely resembled Jim Crow-era blackface minstrelsy. Target said it was “deeply sorry” about the incident.

While many people are still rushing to Target regardless of the controversy, some have continued to double down on their boycott efforts.

Target shares are up 62% in 2026

Shares of Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) are down since the costume controversy, but the stock has performed exceptionally well this year amid a broader turnaround plan, with Target reporting 5.3% growth in net sales for its most recent quarter, thanks in part to higher traffic.

As of Friday’s close, Target stock is up more than 62% in 2026 so far.

Regardless, it makes sense to court millennials, whose purchasing power is rapidly rising and whose total spending is expected to surpass that of their Gen X counterparts sometime in the early 2030s, according to a report from World Data Lab and NielsenIQ. 

Meanwhile, Target is not the only way to shop for Delia’s items, no matter what decade you were born in. A resurrected collection is listed on the website of retailer Dolls Kill. No, it’s not old school catalog ordering, but it’s 2026. We can’t have everything.