- Hey, everyone, it's Justine.
You've probably heard of Shein, right?
It's a Chinese fast fashion company.
They're one of the largest
online only retailers in the world,
to give you an idea of the scale of the thing. (laughs)
According to their CEO,
they add it between 700 and 1,000
new items to the shop
every day. (chuckles)
In the US fashions market,
they already overtook H&M, Zara, Forever 21
and everybody else.
And it's not only in the US, right?
They are growing,
they're shipping to every country in the world.
They're growing at a mind blowing pace.
And yet very little is known about that company.
If you Google it,
you'll see that many people are wondering
whether it's legit, safe,
whether it's even a real brand,
whether it's trustworthy.
So let's talk about Shein and answer all those questions.
Let's start with the prices.
When you go to the Shein website,
the first thing you'll notice is
discounts, (chuckles)
layered on top of each other.
Here, here, here, (laughs)
and the prices are extremely low,
even cheaper than Primemark.
This is your first red flag right there.
When a top initially costs
under 10 euros,
and then you're getting an 80% discount, additionally,
it tells you two things.
First,
they're producing so cheap
that they can afford to sell that top
for two euros instead of 10
and second,
it would cost them more
to put that garment and keep it in a warehouse,
in the storage, rather than selling it.
So the garment is worth less
than the cost of
keeping it in a warehouse.
Logical consequence of this,
the people who are making, sewing the garments,
are not being paid fairly because at that price point,
mathematically,
it's impossible.
But Shein goes even further.
They refuse to disclose how their supply chain is built.
All we know is that they produce mainly in China
and they ship straight from Asia.
There is no warehouse in Europe, for instance.
Independent investigations have shown that
Shein subcontracts to external factories,
that in turn subcontract to further smaller workshops,
which are part of China's informal economy
and work on a handshake basis.
They often have no contracts, no liability,
no business license or any kind of social security
or safety in terms of the working conditions.
In other words, not even Shein knows,
how, where, and by whom (laughs)
their garments are produced.
Their supply chain is completely opaque, even for them.
However, we know that when sub contracting to
a ton of small workshops,
each little workshop is gonna
construct, cut, measure,
size the garments slightly differently,
so you can be sure
that it will have no consistency in the sizing
and there's barely any quality control,
because at that level of complexity, it's just not possible.
As somebody, myself who works in the industry,
I find this kind of business model
extremely risky and absolutely unacceptable.
Another red flag, product photos.
They are all shot from different angles,
so you can't really see the proportions
and the photos are so heavily retouched
that you can be absolutely sure
the garments are not gonna look this way on you.
For instance, this waist here has been redrawn,
it's too smooth.
It's symmetrical, even though the model is not standing
in a front position,
she has an angle
and it's too curved.
This is not a real body. This is poor photo shopping.
They also like to widen the shoulders and make them go up
so that the waist will look thinner,
but it completely screws how the garment looks.
On the next photo you can recognize that
the model's shoulders do not actually go upwards.
The human body simply is not that way.
On top of not showing the products as there really are
with real proportions,
people who shopped Shein in the past have report that
what you see on their photos is far, in terms of quality,
from what you actually receive when you shop.
So they use better samples for the photo shootings
than what you actually get out of production.
I'm gonna just quickly touch upon the materials used
because if you click on the product page,
you will get misleading or play the wrong information
about the fiber composition of the product.
And let's be clear, this is completely illegal.
Here it says a hundred percent cotton,
but if you scroll down,
if you see that you can even scroll down,
it's actually a fiber mix.
And there are, of course, no hints
as to where this product was made.
I did a test water so that you don't have to. (laughs)
You know, earlier this year,
I did a video about swimwear quality,
what to pay attention to in terms of construction,
hardware, fabrics, et cetera.
And for that video,
I ordered from a wide range of brands
at different price points, you know,
to have a good range to show you.
Among the brands that I selected for the experiment,
there were some Shein swimsuits,
The quality was so poor
that I decided not to include them in my swimwear video.
Here's why.
The packaging is plastic with more plastic inside.
And let me tell you, this is not recycled plastic. (laughs)
It's all made in the cheapest polyester you've ever seen.
There are different qualities of polyester.
This is the worst I've ever seen.
You would wash these swimsuits twice
and then the shape will be lost for sure.
The design details like this plaiting,
that is a complete mess. There's fabric everywhere.
This has been sewn in one and a half seconds.
The edges are overstretched, aka, sewn too fast.
Again, it's all about speed at that price point.
See this waistband, it's gonna gape when you wear it
and that edge too, it's not laying flat.
This is terrible fit.
This white fabric,
top of the boob,
it's literally losing microplastics. Can you see?
It's losing fibers.
You can see the glitter in the sunlight. This is plastic.
Are you like supposed to hold your breath when you wear it?
As you would expect, if you watched it here,
the proportions, the colors did not match at all
what was shown on the product photos when I ordered
and they were not two bikinis that had the same size,
even though I ordered the same size.
Next ethical issue and a huge one,
Shein is famous for plagiarism.
There have been multiple scandals
where independent designers and small labels have claimed
that Shein copied their designs
and that was absolutely true.
They don't even like bother changing anything,
they're just copy paste.
They don't give a about intellectual property.
And since they're based in China, even if a quotes,
rules somewhere in the UK,
that Shein has
infringed on the intellectual property,
rights of the designer or the brand,
it's practically impossible
to implement the sanctions in China.
So Shein gets away with it.
You get the big picture.
Shein is fast fashion at its worst. (chuckles)
The website Good On You, which rates big fashion labels
based on sustainability and transparency goals
has given Shein the worst possible grade
on all three criteria.
Animal welfare, labor conditions,
and environmental impact.
By now, Shein must be one of the largest polyester
and microplastic producers in the fashion industry
worldwide.
Yet they claim that they're sustainable
and that they don't use fur, for instance.
I mean, come on.
It's just because fur or silk or like noble, organic fibers
cost more than the price range that they wanna go with.
Cost more than 10 euros.
And Shein does use wool without saying
where it's from and how it's gained.
So it's very likely, on that price point,
that it's being gained from mishandled animals.
Googled the word, Mulesing, if you wanna know more.
I'm not gonna put a photo in here because it's brutal.
I mean, the company is so obviously
greenwashing and making no real effort behind
who would believe it.
Like, I wonder. (chuckles)
If you wanna learn more about the topic of greenwashing,
I recommend you watch this video, linked here
and also down below in the description.
In there I explain what is greenwashing, how to spot it,
which brands do it with examples and help to avoid it.
Despite all these facts,
Shein sales have been growing by 160%
in the first half of this year alone in the US,
in the pandemic. Yeah.
If you wanna gain followers on Tik Tok right now,
you should probably do a Shein
haul.
It's one of the most mentioned brands on the platform.
It's getting a huge buzz in social media at the moment.
And yet,
people who consume Shein products are actively supporting
massive plastic pollution,
at a level never seen before.
Over consumption,
obviously,
slave labor
and everything that's wrong about the fast fashion industry.
Everything that people also call out every time the
sweatshop gets exposed
or every time that a garment factory collapses
and kills people in a production country,
far away in Southeast Asia.
To the people who will want to comment,
"Yes, but Shein is all I can afford",
I wanna answer with concrete figures.
Today in the world, we consume 400% more clothes
than we did
two decades ago.
Every year in the US, the average American
produces 80 pounds of fabric waste
every year. (chuckles)
And I only have the figure for the US
but it's a similar evolution in other
so-called Western countries
that the fast fashion business model was created for.
10 years ago, Shein in barely existed.
It's a very new company.
10 years ago, we did not have 400% more clothes,
but we had clothes. (laughs)
We did not need the price of a t-shirt to go down
from three euros at Primemark
to two euros at Shein.
We did not
need Shein
to get dressed.
Since that company started,
they have done a great job (laughs)
at convincing people
that they have the rights to splurge
and to get new clothes every week,
much more than people actually need.
They have a huge responsibility in convincing people
that clothes are disposable items
with absolutely no concern or even interest
for the human and environmental consequences.
For all these reasons you probably gathered by now, (laughs)
I think Shein is a brand that should not be supported.
I think it should be actively avoided.
One of the goals of this channel
is to show you how the fashion industry works
behind the scenes
so that you can make informed purchase decisions.
If this video make you think,
or if you learn something new here,
please give it a thumbs up,
subscribe to my channel.
And I would like to ask you
to help me spread the word by sharing this video.
I'm convinced that people who are shopping a brand like this
simply don't know on which basis
and damage it is built.
So information is power. We just have to spread it.
The video that I mentioned earlier about greenwashing,
again, it's linked here and down below
so that if you wish you, can spend a bit more time with me.
And
other than this, I will see you in the next one.
Take care.
Bye.