A pair of hours earlier than Shein opened a pop‑up store in Dijon this summer time, the phrases “Shein kills” and “exploitation, forced labour, slavery, pollution” had been discovered graffitied in French on the skin wall.
Yet the fierce backlash to its collection of momentary retailers in France in recent times, together with in Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille, has not deterred the Chinese-founded quick trend model from selecting the nation for its first everlasting bodily shops.
This week it introduced a plan to open outlets in Galeries Lafayette malls in 5 cities and in addition within the BHV retailer within the capital.
“In front of the Paris City Hall, they are creating the new Shein megastore, which — after destroying dozens of French brands — aims to flood our market even more massively with disposable products,” mentioned Yann Rivoallan, the top of the style retailers’ physique Fédération Française du Prêt à Porter Féminin.
Sophie Abriat, an writer and trend reporter for Le Monde’s journal Mmentioned, “The ultra-fast model is a paroxysm of disposability. It is built with ephemerality, with aggressive marketing.”
But, she added, France’s distaste for the pattern went even deeper: “It differs from French culture’s tradition of keeping objects, of savoir-faire — Shein holds a stigma that is moral as well.”
Yet regardless of such outspoken antipathy, and with a Change.org petition to ban Shein in France now having topped 270,000 signatures, the nation has not been proof against the model’s inexorable rise over the previous 5 years.
Its mannequin, primarily based on delivery orders of low cost garments straight from Chinese factories to houses, reportedly introduced in $1 billion internet revenue final yr, making it not merely a figurehead of “ultra-fast fashion,” however one of China’s most profitable corporations. That is regardless of criticism over its environmental influence and working practices, together with allegations of pressured labour that the corporate has denied, and circumstances of little one labour that led to provider contracts being terminated.
Its success rests with the mind-boggling pace and quantity at which it could possibly produce designs, with 7,200 new gadgets listed on the positioning on daily basis. “It marks an entirely new way of consuming — everything is multiplied by a hundred,” mentioned Abriat. Between late 2022 and late 2023, the corporate launched 1.5 million merchandise to the US market — roughly 37 instances greater than Zara and 65 instances greater than H&M, in accordance with Reuters.
Around the time of the Dijon pop-up opening, the French senate permitted laws geared toward curbing ultra-fast trend, particularly platforms comparable to Shein and its ultra-low-cost procuring rival Temu. It proposed a spread of measures, from eco-taxes to a ban on promoting, restrictions on influencer collaborations, obligatory disclosure of manufacturing practices, and redirection of taxed revenues in direction of French sustainable producers.
The invoice was praised by many as a step in the suitable path, however raised eyebrows for distinguishing between “classical” quick trend (Zara and H&M amongst others) and “ultra-fast fashion.” The former group faces much less stringent constraints. For some, this distinction appears to make high-street labels seem extra virtuous by comparability, regardless of comparable provide chains; for others, it’s merely considered a manner of undercutting Chinese competitors.
Yet France has its personal historical past of quick trend, rooted within the Sentier, Paris’s historic garment district within the second and third arrondissements. From the Seventies onward, the quarter, alongside different such wholesale districts (together with in Marseille), developed a mannequin primarily based on speedy turnaround, small portions, and brief provide circuits, typically replenished on demand fairly than by seasonal calendars.
This fuelled the rise of cult — and reasonably priced — homegrown excessive road labels, comparable to Naf Naf, Kookaï, and Jennyfer, which thrived within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, each in France and overseas, earlier than outsourcing manufacturing and finally disappearing or repositioning themselves. By the late twentieth century, the Sentier’s system was outpaced by worldwide labels comparable to H&M and Zara, which delocalised manufacturing and scaled up sourcing and inventory — a dynamic portrayed within the French movie saga “La Vérité si Je Mens! (Would I Lie to You?),” which is ready within the space.
On a cultural degree, Abriat in contrast Shein’s reception to that of the arrival of H&M on Paris’s rue de Rivoli in 1998: “It was considered vulgar. The fashion elite saw it [as] devoid of taste or culture.” Today, she mentioned, “They have been worked into actual labels, fully accepted” whereas Shein has taken on the pariah position.
Attracting youngsters, H&M radically shifted its picture with Karl Lagerfeld’s collaboration in 2004, which bought out inside hours. From then on, France’s trend institution started to simply accept high-street items as half of the Parisian wardrobe.
Other fast-fashion megabrands sought credibility by working tightly with famend trade names. Emmanuelle Alt, the previous editor in chief of Vogue Paris, labored with Zara as a artistic advisor, whereas Suzanne Koller, the co-founder of Self Service journal and present trend editor at M journal, has collaborated extensively with the model, round trend path and styling. The mannequin and Chanel ambassador Caroline de Maigret walked in an H&M runway present, and the mannequin Aymeline Valade has appeared in a Zara look guide and informed W journal that she outlets there, for fundamentals a minimum of.
Sophie Fontanel, a author, influencer, and trend editor at L’Obs, mentioned, “Here in Paris, it has become common to mix Zara, vintage and luxury, all with a certain knowhow. Parisians don’t go to Zara for statement pieces or counterfeits, but for basics: shirts, jeans, timeless staples.” Few admit to carrying the model, nonetheless. “You don’t say it,” says Fontanel. “Or you say: ‘You won’t believe it, but it’s Zara.’”
A key distinction with Shein is its on-line presence, which represents a cultural shift for older customers. the French-British influencer and author Camille Charrière mentioned: “The French still like to shop in stores, with their friends and family, on the weekend. They don’t change outfits radically to go out on the weekend or at night, their purchases are less compulsive.”
Part of the attraction of ultra-fast trend lies in its measurement inclusivity. The plus-size market remains to be just about non-existent in France, significantly amongst mid- and high-end labels.
Ultra-fast trend has additionally launched new methods of consuming: on-line procuring, skipping fittings and bulk ordering. Garments are sometimes worn as soon as, then thrown out or resold on secondhand platforms — a drastic shift in tempo, sturdiness and constructing a wardrobe.
Charrière harassed that there was a “slow” manner of carrying quick trend: “One shouldn’t torture oneself about wearing fast fashion. I have Zara dresses from five years ago that I still wear. To me the most important thing is to force myself to use what I buy … to commit to wearing it.” While that doesn’t change the availability chain it got here from, Charrière might have some extent: Shaming Shein clients typically overlooks the privilege of with the ability to afford dearer alternate options.
Shein has seized on that stress. In April it plastered slogans comparable to “Fashion is a right, not a privilege” throughout billboards and adverts. Christophe Castaner, the previous inside minister who’s now head of Shein France’s communication, accused lawmakers of punishing low-income customers with what he referred to as “a VAT on the products of the poorest,” including, “Personally, I find that pretty disgusting.”
Shein has mentioned in response to stories of labour abuses that it really works “tirelessly to ensure that these isolated cases are removed from our supply chain entirely.”
For Elise Goldfarb, a professor on the Institut Français de la Mode and an energetic voice in denouncing the use of Uyghur pressured labour in quick trend provide chains, the phenomenon has make clear the truth of one other section of French society. “Fast fashion speaks to a segment of the population for whom it feels outrageous to be lectured about ecology during a major crisis they are paying for,” she says.
Taxation and regulation could also be a helpful first step, however they go away the core drawback of overproduction untouched. The actual query is how the trade might be reshaped across the sturdiness and restore of garments that may be handed down generations, as soon as so central to the French method.
“It’s like a flood of information with no attachment, everything interchangeable,” mentioned Stéphane Popescu, co-founder of a consultancy specialising in moral trend. “I see mountains of ultra-fast fashion clothing in vintage stores, and it feels as if the emotional value of things has disappeared, like there’s no time to build memories around items.”
By Alice Pfeiffer