Shasa Brand Guidelines: The Los Angeles-Founded Fashion Chain of Mexico’s Malls

An American start and a Mexican home market.

Shasa is a fashion chain aimed mainly at young women, with shops in shopping centres across Mexico. English Wikipedia gives its founding as 1995 in Los Angeles, California, describes it as a privately held company run by members of a private family, and files it both among clothing companies of the United States and among retail companies of Mexico; that entry carries no references of its own. The Los Angeles origin has independent support: in September 2017 FashionUnited called Shasa an American store and described it as the brand founded in Los Angeles.

English Wikipedia names no founder, and the company’s own “who we are” page sets out no history in its text. What can be dated is where the chain grew. Spanish Wikipedia describes Shasa as a retail and fashion company with more than 100 shops in Mexico, selling clothing, accessories and footwear to women and men aged roughly 15 to 35, and says it has been a member of ANTAD, the Mexican association of self-service and department stores, since 2003.

Mexico became the centre of the business. FashionUnited reported in September 2017 that Mexico was the country where the brand had the most shops, and named Honduras, El Salvador and the United States as its next markets after Mexico. In the same piece it described the brand as offering beauty, fashion and accessories lines. English Wikipedia lists 113 locations in total for 2024 without dividing them by country.

Ninety shops, then a hundred.

The chain’s growth in Mexico is documented through its shop openings. In September 2017 FashionUnited reported that Shasa was close to 90 shops in the country, with a new store in the Parque Puebla shopping centre, which had opened that week, and another at Toreo, in the Mexico City area, three months earlier. The trade site said the chain was then in more than 15 Mexican cities, always inside shopping centres aimed at upper and middle-income shoppers, and that it shared many of those centres with international fast-fashion chains.

Less than two years later the chain reached a round number. In July 2019 the retail trade site Retailers reported that Shasa had opened its 100th shop, on the ground floor of the Midtown shopping centre in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The store covered almost 400 square metres, and the company described its new spaces as places meant to inspire fashion shoppers in an extroverted, lively setting full of music. Retailers reported that the opening of the hundredth shop drew company representatives, retail figures from Mexico and the United States, business partners from several countries and local influencers. Retailers said that by then Shasa was present in 30 Mexican states and had an online shop.

Spanish Wikipedia adds detail on the larger stores. It says the company has flagship shops of more than 1,000 square metres in Mexico City, Los Cabos, Acapulco and Cancún, and that its store in the Parque Delta shopping centre in Mexico City was enlarged from 300 to 1,000 square metres. The same article says Shasa began selling through its own website in 2015 and launched Shasa Man, a menswear line, in February 2017, extending a business that had been built on women’s clothing.

On production, Spanish Wikipedia says the most important part of Shasa’s range is made in Mexico, and reports more than 1,500 direct jobs at the end of 2020.

Catalogues, factories and shopping centres.

Mexican fashion and footwear brands reach their customers in several different ways, and their identities follow from that choice. Some sell mainly through printed and digital catalogues carried by networks of independent sellers; others sell through chains of their own stores, department-store counters or, in a few cases, museum and hotel shops. A catalogue brand’s pages, a sportswear maker’s team kits and a silk house’s scarf prints each do the work that a shop window does elsewhere.

León, in the state of Guanajuato, is the centre of much of the footwear trade. Business titles such as Alto Nivel and El CEO describe the city as home to shoe and sportswear makers including Andrea, Charly and Pirma, and to many small and medium producers of leather goods. Several companies started elsewhere and moved there: Andrea began in Mexico City in 1973 and moved its making to a León factory in 1981, according to Alto Nivel.

Ownership is usually private, and often in the hands of founders or families. Company pages and the business press describe founders, holding companies and store networks in different levels of detail, and branch, affiliate and outlet counts change from year to year, so each figure in these guides carries the date of the source that gave it. Where a brand’s own website is the only source for a statement, the guide says so.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it and when, who owns it, where its products are made as far as dated sources say, and how it presents itself through catalogues, kits, prints and stores. The colours and typefaces shown are an unofficial interpretation, not the brands’ own.

Monochrome shops and a broad range.

The look of Shasa is mostly the look of its shops. Spanish Wikipedia describes the store design as built on monochrome contrasts, with bright touches and metallic details, arranged to tell stories around different lifestyles. The 2019 opening in Guadalajara was described by the company in the same spirit, as a space meant to feel extroverted and lively, with music playing.

The range has widened well beyond the women’s clothing on which the chain began. The Shasa website in November 2026 is organised into clothing, shoes, accessories and beauty, with clothing running from dresses, jumpsuits and tops to jeans, skirts, knitwear and swimwear, and shoes from boots and heels to trainers and sandals. Accessories cover jewellery, bags, hair accessories, sunglasses and phone cases, and beauty covers fragrance and make-up. The site also carries a separate line called Hypsters and seasonal edits such as denim, beachwear and activewear. FashionUnited had already listed beauty, fashion and accessories as the brand’s lines in 2017.

The online shop is now a large part of how the brand presents itself. The website runs seasonal sales events, gift cards and a store finder alongside the catalogue. That pairing of shops and online sales was already in place in 2019, when Retailers reported that the chain had both a national network of shops and an online store.

English Wikipedia describes Shasa as a private company. Its store count has changed over time: close to 90 in Mexico in September 2017, 100 in July 2019, and 113 in total in 2024 according to English Wikipedia.

For a design guide, Shasa shows how a fashion chain can build its identity through shop interiors, a fast-changing range and a shared presence in Mexico’s shopping centres. Compare Julio, another Mexican womenswear chain, and Liverpool, the Mexican department-store group. For this guide we use black, a bright pink and silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Shasa’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.