Glamour Shots was once the coolest store in every mall.

Boomer mothers and Gen-X teens and 20-somethings paid $29.95 for makeovers and photography sessions defined by big hair, white satin gloves, heavy eye shadow and contemplative poses, in an era when pictures were taken for special occasions and not just to commemorate every brunch.

At its mid-90s peak, Glamour Shots had more than 350 stores, with licensees in Venezuela, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In Lancaster County, there was a Glamour Shots at Park City Center.

In neighboring Berks County, there was one at Berkshire Mall near Wyomissing.

Now, in 2019, just five stores remain — although there were seven stores last month. Most of these scant survivors have adapted with the times. What they have in common is that each is steered by devoted, longtime owners who have embraced a more natural look and whose business and photography skills were enough to persuade families, professionals and high school kids that a glamour shot could be taken for work, special occasions and graduations — not merely for entertainment.

Louisville, Kentucky, still has a store.

And Staten Island, New York, has one, owned by Cara Lovello, who uses her popular Instagram account where she showcases her makeup artist skills, to direct followers to the Staten Island Glamour Shots handle.

Two stores remain at malls in Bridgewater and Freehold, New Jersey. The secret to their endurance?

“We’re in New Jersey,” said Cliff Eng, the owner of both. “We got malls everywhere.”

Another Glamour Shots store owned by Eng in Rockaway, New Jersey, closed just last week. Eng said the mall ownership was not being flexible on rent. But he's still optimistic about Glamour Shots — Eng is already evaluating options for a new Glamour Shots at malls in Paramus and Cherry Hill.

But at nearly the same time, a Glamour Shots in Ellicott City, Maryland, also closed and disappeared from the Glamour Shots website.

And the fifth remaining Glamour Shots is in El Paso — the last location west of the Mississippi.

El Paso is the only city in the world where it’s likely that a majority of millennials have a glamour shot.

Driving from Lancaster to New Jersey to get a Glamour Shot

In Staten Island, friends routinely ask Lovello why she doesn’t ditch the Glamour Shots title. She works with “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” LaValle on a monthly basis, filming her YouTube channel, and snapped a holiday card for Melissa Gorga of “Real Housewives.”

“There’s still like some kind of security,” she said, “about having the large, branded name Glamour Shots.”

The name does have a currency.

When Mary Swope, 53, of Lancaster, first went in 1994, she chose a look — curled hair, bangs, hoop earrings and a black jacket — that was “completely out of my comfort zone,” she said.

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“They really went overboard,” she said. “They really made you feel like a model.”

And, 23 years later, Swope, while taking care of her ailing mother, realized she wanted a quality photo of herself to later pass down to her children and grandchildren.

Her memory from Glamour Shots inspired her to drive 2 1/2 hours from Lancaster to the nearest store, in Bridgewater.

Big hair, big makeup

A glamour shot was not subtle. The makeovers were about big hair, doused in spray, and heavy amounts of foundation, powder and blush intended to make the customers, almost always women, feel like they were preparing for the runway. Staff at a Cincinnati Glamour Shots once boasted they could turn any customer into Cindy Crawford. They’d even paint on a mole.

For the photos, women picked four outfits from an assortment of jackets, wraps, furs, bustiers and dresses. Sequins were practically mandatory.

The photographers shot only from the waist up. They used camera filters that smoothed out wrinkles and blemishes. After the photo session, customers viewed their pictures on a video screen — immediately, thanks to proprietary technology — and selected their favorite looks. Jack Counts Jr., the Oklahoma City entrepreneur who started the company, described the filtering and makeover method that allowed customers to see a touched-up version of themselves as a precursor to Instagram but “in a real way.”

Counts was already owner of a photo finishing business called Candid Color Systems in 1988 when he learned of a store in Hawaii that offered a makeover with a photo session. His original location in Oklahoma City had the name Fantasy Faces. The company didn’t take off until he opened a store in Dallas that went by Glamour Shots.

Ads with before-and-after photos landed in almost every local newspaper. Olympic figure skater and ’90s icon Tonya Harding visited a studio in her Oregon hometown multiple times, according to The Vancouver Columbian.

In 1996, Glamour Shots was seeing $100 million in sales and had 6,000 employees, according to estimates from The Wall Street Journal and The Oklahoman at the time.

'It just became passe'

But the brand was based on a fashion trend that had already crested. By the late ’90s, said Jimmy Paul, a well-known hair stylist, grunge had gone mainstream, and looks shaped by Helmut Lange and Prada ushered in the minimalist era.

“Makeup and hair got very stripped down,” he said. “It became about flat irons and straightening.”

While the portrait studio business overall remained stable — census figures showed modest growth in the industry from the late ’90s until the 2008 recession — many of the 350 Glamour Shots stores folded by the end of the 20th century, unable to escape their association with the outdated style.

“It just became passé,” said Bob Eveleth, the first Glamour Shots licensee and owner of nearly 50 stores at the company’s peak. “We did one focus group in North Carolina. One of the guys was talking about giving Glamour Shots gift certificates as a joke. And I thought we kind of crossed that threshold.”

The remaining stores wilted in failing malls that charged steep rents. Then Apple and Samsung equipped every cellphone with a quality camera. About five years ago, with 30 to 40 stores left, a popular Groupon promotion provided a fleeting burst of new customers before technology almost completely wiped out Glamour Shots altogether.