It is taking fast fashion to ever faster and ever cheaper extremes, and making billions from it. Why is the whole world shopping at Shein?
Shein is the world’s most-Googled clothing brand, the largest fast-fashion retailer by sales in the US, and one of the most popular shopping apps in the world. Its website is organised into dozens of categories: women, curve, home, kids, men and beauty, among others, though the women’s clothing section anchors the site. There are hundreds of thousands of products available, and many of them are sorted into Shein’s collections.
In an attempt to wear clothes like those I’d seen on niche blogs, and with the help of even more niche blogs, I learned to sew. I coveted things I couldn’t afford – designer pieces I’d learned about on the blogs and rare 1960s vintage dresses with frilly hems – so I constructed analogues. It was time-consuming, I learned, to make something, and much more time-consuming to make something well.
TikTok was where I learned about Shein. For a while my For You page served me videos of sustainable fashion influencers decrying Shein’s labour and environmental practices. Of all the fast-fashion producers, Shein has attracted the most criticism.
Zara was a colossal, world-altering success. By 2011, Zara had stores on every populated continent. Today Zara produces 450m garments a year, generating an annual revenue of $26bn. The 20,000 garment styles Zara produces every year can move from concept to product-for-purchase in one of the company’s 3,000 retail stores in as few as 15 days.Zara arguably set the blueprint for every major fast-fashion brand.
On the marketing side, the company was early to the influencer game, sending promotional products to bloggers as far back as 2012. Shein advertised on social media and relied on digital word-of-mouth to move merchandise – obvious strategies a decade later, but novel ones at the time. Today, Shein contracts thousands of influencers around the world, sending them enormous amounts of free product in exchange for social media posts.
Only occasionally are customer reviews critical. A reviewer docks a star on a lilac off-the-shoulder bodysuit for the item’s shipping condition: “VERY WRINKLED ON ARRIVAL.” A cardigan review reports, distressingly: “texture was surprising.” But nearly every one, regardless of tone, is five stars. A perfect rating for a “fairycore” black ruffled dress says: “The material kinda sucks … And it kind of makes a lot of noise when you move. Almost immediately the top Lacey pattern snapped off.
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