Hi there, welcome back! If you have been keeping up with my blog, you may have seen SHEIN (pronounced “she-in”) come up a couple of times and today we will finally be unpacking what goes on behind the scenes at the new ultra-fast fashion brand that has taken the world by storm.
What is SHEIN?
SHEIN was first launched under the name of “SheInside” (pronounced “she-inside”) in 2008 and functioned like a dropshipping business that specialised in selling wedding dresses to the United States. The brand later procured its supply chain in 2014 and transformed into a “fully integrated retailer” (Nguyen, 2021). Based in China, SHEIN is quickly becoming a fan favourite with its ubiquity on social media platforms from YouTube hauls, TikTok recommendations to sponsored Instagram advertisements. Early adoption of social media marketing has proven to be effective as SHEIN has become a common name, especially among Gen Z consumers. The viral social media marketing essentially became one that runs by itself.
Unlike ZARA, H&M and other fast fashion giants, SHEIN belongs to a new category – ultra-fast fashion. While fast fashion retailers move products from paper to the racks in 2 weeks, SHEIN compresses this timeline to only 3 days (Dowsett and Yu, 2020). Retailing for prices around half the price of clothes at Zara, ultra-fast fashion players like SHEIN are set to dominate Zara and H&M in the fashion industry.
What’s so bad about SHEIN?
As an ultra-fast fashion retailer, SHEIN accelerates the throw-away culture. With thousands of products released daily, it is almost impossible for SHEIN to be sustainable for our planet (if at all). Cheap clothes are produced in the masses and with their low quality, most of these clothes end up in the landfill. Besides the suite of environmental impacts that accompany fast fashion retailers, SHEIN is considered to be the “worst of the worst”:
- Lack of transparency of supply chains
There are no public disclosures on SHEIN’s supply chains and working conditions. According to a Reuters article, SHEIN had previously published false information on its website that working conditions adhere to “international labour standard bodies” (Waldersee, 2021). While other fast fashion giants have open-sourced documents providing details on their factories and suppliers, SHEIN’s supply chain remained opaque and the only information available was that they had never employed child labour or engaged in forced labour on their website (Waldersee, 2021).
- Design plagiarism
With SHEIN dropping as many as 3000 new items daily, these new designs must come from somewhere…and it turns out that SHEIN is reportedly stealing designs from small artists and business owners. At least 45 designs from independent designer Bailey Prado were plagiarised and while Prado retails it for $95 to $300, identical designs are listed on SHEIN for less than $20. These small business owners also cannot afford to be embroiled with SHEIN due to hefty legal fees and paperwork. As part of this blog post, I also approached 3 friends for their opinions on SHEIN and all of them indicated that design plagiarism was one of the most deplorable aspects of the brand.
My thoughts
To conclude this post, I pen down some of my thoughts and opinions on the rise of ultra-fast fashion players like SHEIN: SHEIN is unsustainable and unethical, but they are indeed cheap…but what about Zara, DKYNY, Dolce and Gabbana? Their clothes are not necessarily more sustainable or ethical, and they are not cheap either. Does paying more mean that you get more sustainable/ethical clothes?
Maybe we are looking through the wrong lens – why are we expecting SHEIN to be sustainable and ethical? It is almost as though we are expecting something red to turn into something green. The fast fashion industry is inherently unsustainable, to begin with. Furthermore, most consumers (and even the comments in the YouTube video above) claim that sustainable/ethical brands are far too expensive but are we missing the elephant in the room here? We blame fast fashion brands for environmental pollution but as consumers, we are the ones fueling and perpetuating the pollution! Perhaps the best recourse is to avoid overconsumption and buy only what we need.
With that, FaSHEIN faux pas wraps up Chapter 1. In the next few posts, I will be sharing more about the types of pollution brought about by the fast fashion industry (Chapter 2) but until then, let’s keep running away from fast fashion!
Cheers,
Chermaine
References
Dowsett, S., & Yu, S. (2020). China’s turbo-charged online fashion takes on Zara and H&M. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/inditex-challengers-focus-idUSKBN27104R
Nguyen, T. (2021). Shein is the future of fast fashion. Is that a good thing? Vox. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22573682/shein-future-of-fast-fashion-explained
Waldersee, V. (2021). EXCLUSIVE Chinese retailer Shein lacks disclosures, made false statements about factories. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-chinese-retailer-shein-lacks-disclosures-made-false-statements-about-2021-08-06/