This is rue21 store inside the Crossroads mall on the upper floor. It carries men's clothing, men's…read moreaccessories, women's clothing, and women's accessories. It does NOT carry the Rue21 Plus-sized line (not a single store in Iowa does!) However, they will accept online returns from your rue21.com purchase. They do carry socks and shoes, but the shoes are sized in "S, M, L, XL" instead of actually shoe sizes, so they may not fit everyone fine.
This is a nice location. When they're super busy over the weekends, the clothing may not get folded correctly or the hangers may not be hung up in size-order. Most of the time, however, it's a pretty clean store - though it has a lot of merchandise in it, so it ends up feeling a bit crowded if there are a lot of people in the store.
rue21 regularly runs sales and whatnot for half-off or 30%-off or so. It may be worth asking the cashier if any of those sales can be applied to your purchase. If you sign up for their e-mail newsletter online, you'll know. I hate paying full-price here because I know they regularly have these sales. With the half-off sale price, though, you can end up getting pairs of good jeans for less than $20, trendy shirts for less than $15, undies for $3-ish a pair, and surprisingly comfortable bras for around $8 each. It's not a very expensive store, but they do carry a lot of trendy clothing for very-affordable prices with the coupons.
The staff is nice enough here. They mostly leave you alone, but they'll usually great meet when I come into the store. They're usually happy to answer questions, and while they seem busy or focused on what they're doing, they've never been rude to me.
However, you should expect to take a bit of time to check-out. I rarely see both registers open at once, and they only seem to open them whenever there are 3+ people in line to check-out. Depending how many items each person ahead of you bought (and the sales associate does need to remove those security tags and refold on every. single. item), you might wait about 5 or 10 minutes to check-out here. It's usually closer to 5, though.
Final thoughts: If you want affordable and trendy clothing that's pretty decent in quality, Rue21 is surprisingly good. I wish they carried their plus-sizes in-store, but they do not. They only go up to a women's XL in-store. It's a decent shopping experience, and while I'm not always fond of the trends they're selling, I've gotten some really cute clothing here.
