SHEIN
SHEIN is an online platform which sells the latest trends in fashion and accessories at incredibly low prices. They’ve been endorsed by influencers and actors such as Madelaine Petsch of Riverdale, but they’ve also run into a fair amount of controversy as well. Constantly at the centre of discussions about ethical consumption and fast fashion, SHEIN has become synonymous with mass-produced clothing fabricated by underpaid workers and designed off the backs of hard-working artists.
Ethical consumption
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
No matter how you learned this – whether you’ve lived through the recent spike in interest in sustainable fashion, influencers being criticised for returning clothes from their hauls because they don’t have enough space, or you watched that bit in The Good Place where Eleanor and the Gang realise that literally no one goes to the good place because everything we do is inherently bad – it’s probably a good idea that you understand this statement.
While scrolling on TikTok, as you do, I often see videos by bloggers discussing sustainable fashion. However, increasingly, there’s another question people are asking – how on earth can we consume anything ethically, when every option seems to be harmful to the planet, or to those who are making it?
If buying bulk from cheap online outlets such as SHEIN is unethical due to child labour and pollution, we are encouraged to explore sustainable, handmade options (such as Lucy & Yak). However, these are expensive. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to afford a pair of Lucy and Yak dungarees or trousers – ranging from £40 to, in some cases, £90!
The definition of handmade is also up for debate. To an extent, most clothes are fabricated in some way by human beings, and there are factories in this country where it’s happening. Around Black Friday in 2020, there was a fair amount of scandal when it was revealed that companies such as Pretty Little Thing were paying their factory workers less than minimum wage, not far from where one of my best friends goes to university in Leicester. Pretty Little Thing’s 8p Black Friday deal not only raised ethical concerns about paid labour, but also started another conversation about overconsumption which quickly died out.
Clothing by companies such as Lucy & Yak is labelled as “handmade” because a great deal of care goes into the making of each garment, using ethically sourced fabrics, while paying the fabricators properly. But someone is still making the clothes which you find on Pretty Little Thing and SHEIN’s website. It’s just branded differently.
Design theft & privacy concerns
Another issue which has come to light when we discuss fast fashion is privacy concerns – some young women on TikTok have been raising awareness of information being stolen from their accounts, possibly by SHEIN. They’ve reported that various people in China tried to log into their Apple IDs, and some even got phone calls from their banks, reporting that someone had tried to take out large amounts of money. However, this is speculation.
Not only this, but reportedly, SHEIN steals designs. In fact, several Twitter users have exemplified the prevalence of art-stealing bots on the site by encouraging people to tweet “this should be a t-shirt” underneath joke pieces of artwork. Automatically, bots will pick up people tweeting this phrase, and give it a few days and somewhere out there, one of the many websites which print generic t-shirt designs will have that joke piece of artwork. Capitalism is an insidious creature.
In fact, artists who started out on Depop, like Emma Warren, have reportedly had their designs stolen by big companies like SHEIN. It seems that there may not actually be many human beings behind the website – after all, it was SHEIN who ran into trouble when they tried to sell a swastika necklace. They argued that it was a Buddhist symbol of religion, but in the past, they’ve also tried to sell Islamic prayer mats as “rugs”, so I’m a little sceptical.
The problem with all these transgressions by companies like SHEIN is this – we can be shocked and horrified that they would blatantly steal artwork, and be subject to data breaches which have resulted in attempted hacks, but in the end, their prices keep us coming back.
Influencers & SHEIN
That, and their clever marketing – many influencers and actors have been paid for posts which advertise the website. It’s been noted that many influencers only buy an outfit for a particular post, and then return it. But the ugly truth is that often, when you return items to a company online, then those clothes will not be resold. It’s far more likely that they’ll be incinerated, creating even more carbon emissions.
How can influencers justify buying outfits just to wear for a day? Try before you buy schemes, and pay-later companies such as Klarna could be partially to blame – it’s an attempt to replicate the experience of buying from department stories online, which is incredibly useful in a pandemic, but causes a myriad of financial and environmental problems.
In fact, some influencers have even reported that they simply bulk buy items for haul videos and then return most of it, explaining that they don’t have the space. But they’re emulating unsustainable consumption, and encouraging us to keep up with the latest trends by going out and buying these clothes as well! It’s madness!
Solutions and alternatives
Sadly, fixing this issue at a personal level isn’t as simple as telling everyone to buy their clothes from charity shops and places like Depop.
Charity shops are a lot of fun: I get most of my books there. However, there’s limited options there, especially in terms of sizing. And, the problem is, with the current spike in interest in thrift and charity shops, Depop shop owners have descended upon these once affordable options and plundered them, taking the good quality pieces and flipping them online for extortionate prices (you may have seen items on Depop tagged as “Brandy Melville” and “rare” as a justification for their extreme prices, and in some cases, buying children’s clothing from charity shops and branding them as “y2k fashion” on their sites).
Thrifting has been gentrified. Charity shops are shut. Sustainable clothing options are incredibly expensive – often, this is because items are priced according to how much labour goes into them.
Not only does this lead back to points a lot of us have been making over time about how we chronically undervalue people’s labour – no, it is not reasonable to price a t-shirt at £2 when a human being spent an hour making it! – but it makes sustainable fashion inaccessible for people who can’t afford it.
A good rule of thumb is often, to buy vintage: before the age of Primark and SHEIN, items were often made with more durability in mind, because mass production wasn’t as much of a thing. And, buy less!
I could stand to learn from this lesson myself. Especially during the pandemic, I’ve been eyeing that “add to basket” button like it’s the last doughnut, and that’s the nature of social media and serotonin manufacture. Every time I hit buy on another pair of funky vintage shorts, I’m happy for five minutes. Until I remember that I’m living through major historical events.
However, it’s good to invest in high quality, durable, and often second-hand items. My most worn pair of shoes is a pair of Doc Martens I bought on Depop for £60 – they were originally £110, and had been worn once. All I’ve done is change the laces, and I wear them practically every day (not indoors, of course).
Personal responsibility
It is incredibly frustrating trying to shoulder the burdens of mass production and fast fashion on your own shoulders. It seems that everything we do in order to be more ethical, beyond mending our own clothes, never buying anything, or swapping with others (all of which are good ideas in theory, but don’t take into account sizing, clothes wearing out and more intimate items), has a negative impact on someone or something.
It’s the responsibility of companies like SHEIN to be better. The app Good On You is part of the movement to hold companies accountable, but it’s also important to remember that when you’re a student, holding yourself to the same moral standard as multi-million dollar companies who don’t pay their staff is a massive emotional burden you aren’t equipped for.
As with climate change, it’s important to do what we can to improve our own behaviour within our means, but it’s equally as vital that we hold our politicians and these companies accountable. And avoid North London charity shops.