When its okay to shop at Shein
April Fools
It is never okay to shop at Shein, Forever 21, H&M, Fashion Nova, any of them. but let’s actually talk about why. There are endless lists on the internet laying out the evil things these companies do but I wanted to take a moment and talk about mindset and ripple effects
April Fools again: Quick List
Materials: One of the reasons for this ridiculously low price is that Shein heavily relies on synthetic, plastic-based materials like polyester, acrylic, and nylon, which are cheaper to manufacture than natural fibers like cotton or wool.
Labor: According to the report, at Shein’s factories, employees are paid per item, and there is neither a basic wage nor an overtime premium. Workers work 11 hours a day and hardly have up to three free days a month.
Over Production: A report shows that Zara, one of the most popular fashion companies, launches about 10,000 new products annually. Conversely, Shein releases 6,000 fresh “stock-keeping units” (including old designs in new colors) daily. This relentless pursuit of quantity over quality results in an overwhelming volume of products flooding the market.
Okay now that we are all caught up lets think about the effect this has……
Organic Materials are used, namely wool. Wool is a fiber primarily sourced from Sheep farms. It’s insulating, fire and wrinkle resistant and durable. Wool fibres can absorb up to 30% of their own weight in moisture, making fine woollen garments uniquely able to handle body moisture in both hot and cold environments.
These fast fashion companies found a work around. Synthetic Materials: Polyester, Viscose, Modal, they’re all the same. That stretch fabric we’ve been told everyone loves. It’s made up of plastics and oils. Once you’ve worn these garments once or twice, they’re thrown away or donated, most end up in a landfill in a third world country, where they need to be buried or burned to be destroyed. Then dumped into the ocean, for fish to eat, and we eat fish, and we now have higher micro plastics in our bodies.
These “materials” drive the price incredibly low, disrupting the natural supply chains. If people don’t buy wool, no farms, no fabric mills, no need for skilled craftspeople who work on the garments. Not to mention wool is the superior fabric. So we will loose a fabric that actually feels good on our bodies, and be left with plastic, literally laminating our bodies, and then since that’s our only choice, but they’re made like disposable razors, we throw them out more, and buy more since that’s all we have left, and on and on.
We love to romanticize the past, when things were built to last. An average garment from Bards takes about 20-25 hours of handwork. The fabric will last years and the construction of the garment is so that if you gain or lose weight, it can be adjusted. Like an old car, it is meant to be used, and taken care of.
Now that product quality is so terrible we have tipped the scale in favor of consuming more. It used to be, my pants need to be repaired. Now its, i’ll just get new ones. And we do this across the board. Gain weight, new clothes. Lose weight, new clothes. Didn’t like them, new clothes. Liked them, new clothes. Trying them, new clothes. Never wore them, new clothes.
We’ve seen this lack of quality affect two sectors heavily: Dry Cleaning and Tailoring.
Dry Cleaning now sounds as awful as doing your taxes. People just want to throw their suit in the wash with their sneakers and be done with it. But the properties of dry cleaning include solvents that get into the natural fibers and pull the dirt from the garment without harming it. These machine washable products only get worse every wear, and most can’t get the stains out because there are no fibers to pull from.
Tailoring is like a “luxury” now. We think of tailors as shaman we call down from the mountains. Most clothing isn’t even worth tailoring. Ah it’s so cheap, i’ll just wear it and it’s fine. What a preposterous way to think?! We have now gotten to the point, we don’t mind wasting money on things that don’t fit, that we bought purely because we need to be around people. WHAT?!
In conclusion:
What has happened is a change in perception of value and quality. Simultaneously, a lack of understanding, overwhelming misconceptions, and a need for re-education. All while the planet suffers.
What I mean is this. Now that these companies are so popular, they have normalized a $5 shirt, $15 pants, $100 suits. To the point where consumers look at a $3,800 suit from Bards, or even a $1,200 suit from a boutique and think. “They’re ripping me off, i’m just paying for the label'“. They’re so blind to the idea of what goes into this process. To make matters worse, we have these phony made to measure companies like Indochino, Hocketry, iTailor, that promote exceptional customer service if the garment is wrong they’ll remake it. That’s because the garment was so cheap to make in the first place, they can still grow while eating that cost.
We look at these titanic companies and think wow, they must be doing something right if they’re that popular. They are able to throw all their money into marketing and their back end because they pay nothing in labor, and nothing in materials. All the while, they create their own demand, since the product is so terrible, it forces you to buy more. So they throw up crazy sales, while not saying anything about how much of that clothing was sent to a landfill days later. This will eventually lead to tailors, craftspeople, milliners, farmers, the list goes on…
I will get off my soap box now. But think about these point. They’re important.
