About

Casual Corner was an American retail clothing chain founded in 1950 by childhood friends Charles E. Carples and Stanley W. Vogel in West Hartford, Connecticut. With an initial $5,000 investment from each founder, the first store opened on April Fools' Day in a 750-square-foot space repurposed with materials from old tobacco barns. Breaking retail norms of the era, Casual Corner allowed women to browse and try on clothing freely, offering a more casual shopping experience reflected in its name. Early expansion included rights sold to brothers William and Irving Miller, who opened Texas locations designed with upscale, country-inspired decor. By its first year, the company earned $45,000 in sales, growing to $2 million annually within a decade.

Acquired by U.S. Shoe Corporation in 1970, Casual Corner became the cornerstone of the Women's Specialty Retailing Group, which grew to over 1,500 stores at its peak in 1989. In 1995, Luxottica purchased U.S. Shoe primarily for its LensCrafters division, later spinning off the retail group as Casual Corner Group under Leonardo Del Vecchio. Despite operating 525 stores by 2000, Casual Corner succumbed to rising competition, closing its remaining locations in late 2005 after being sold to a liquidator.