Chinese fast fashion retailer Shein has been accused multiple times of copying someone else's designs, from other retailers à la Zara's (there are even Instagram accounts comparing identical designs by the two retailers…), to famous fashion designers and brands including Rick Owens, Levi's, Dr Martens and Ralph Lauren, just to mention a few of them.
Shein also plagiarized creations by small business and young independent designers and labels, among the others (and here the list is extremely long...) Bailey Prado, Baiia, Elexiay, Tracy Garcia's Transformations by Tracy, Loud Bodies, Run & Follow, Mariama Diallo's Sincerely Ria, Sashagai Ruddock' Flaws of Couture and Joanna Cosentino's Joella Crafts. In some cases like Ruddock's, Shein infringed the copyright of a young designer, but then offered Ruddock a collaboration; in other cases such as Bailey Prado's, Shein copied not just the actual designs, but also the styling of the products and the visuals accompanying the line.
In most cases Shein didn't even bother altering one detail, but copied things down to the tiniest seams (on TikTok there's also an hashtag - #sheinstolemydesign - for those designers plagiarized by the brand). Yet, despite it all, Shein is thriving.
Founded in Guangzhou, China, in 2008 by Chris Xu, in 2021 Shein surpassed Amazon, turning into the number one app in the US under the shopping categories for both iOS and Android. In April this year, Shein was valued at $100bn.
Shein's secret? The extremely low prices, with dresses starting at $4, and the widest possible range of clothes and accessories. With 500-2,000 new items getting added to the site every day and shipping to more than 150 countries, it is practically impossible to compete with them. Production is based on third-party suppliers in China that make small batches of clothes. When an item is successful, it is produced again, otherwise it is discontinued. In Shein's case we do not talk merely about fast fashion, but about super or even ultra fast fashion that guaranteed the company a rapid growth in a relatively short time.
But all this comes with a human cost: apart from plagiarizing other designers (otherwise how can you keep on producing ideas for super fast new garments?), Shein has been accused of labour exploitation (with people working 75 hours a week),child labour, unethical working conditions and environmental abuse (its returns end up in the landfill, because it costs more to put them back in circulation than to destroy them); so far it has also sold racially offensive items (remember the incident of the swastika pendant necklace?) and it had a data breach that saw millions of customer's information leaked.
Shein represents the epitome of overproduction: yet all these accusations seem to have very little impact on its popularity, proving we talk about the planet and saving it, but we still look for a bargain and the chance to buy more clothes for very little (there is actually something very important to remember - Shein's biggest customer base is not formed by people with low incomes, but by people with substantial disposable incomes who are into trends and tend to buy a lot of garments for very little).
Yet Shein just announced at the Copenhagen sustainability summit, the industry's largest forum for sustainable progress, that it is pledging $15m over three years for textile waste workers in Ghana. Over 15 million secondhand garments arrive in Ghana every week, 40% of them waste. As the country doesn't have landfill or incinerators, the clothes enter the environment, ending up in the ocean, on the ocean floor, and on the beach.
Shein came to an agreement with The Or Foundation, a U.S. and Ghana-based not-for-profit organization that works in the fields of environmental justice, education and fashion development.
According to the agreement, part of Shein's Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Fund, the company will donate $50 million over the next five years, to address global textile waste management, develop a circular economy, and educate people.
The Or Foundation is the initial grant recipient and will be receiving $5 million annually for three years from the overall Fund. The Foundation hopes to use the funds to help Ghana-based businesses turning textile waste into new products, launch initiatives with Ghanaian textile manufacturers, help the Kantamanto Market, the world's largest secondhand clothing market and, last but not least, expand their Mabilgu (sisterhood) Apprenticeship Program.
The latter focuses on "backbreaking" work, an expression that describes young women and children carrying bales of secondhand clothing on their heads working at the Kantamanto Market in Accra. These workers carry clothing bales that weight several kilos on their heads and they are paid a dollar a trip.
Hopefully, the money will also be used to start projects to remove clothing waste from the gutters and the sea/the beaches: when it is dry the textile waste gets stuck in the gutters mixing with human excrement and industrial waste, which is already a health threat. But, when it rains, clothes end up in the sea, polluting the beaches and making it difficult for fishermen to get their boats out to sea and pull their nets down to the bottom of the ocean. Besides, clothing waste pushes contaminated water into people's homes, causing electrocution and spreading the risk of malaria. Shein will also work with The Or Foundation to identify additional grant recipients in other countries impacted by fashion’s waste problem this year and in coming years.
Now the point is, can we trust Shein? Well, when it comes to copyright matters, Shein's website offers an email to contact their team about trademark or copyright infringement, but designers who do so simply get ignored. At times, the allegedly copied item is quickly and quietly removed from Shein's site. Shein is very quick to copy, manufacture and take down the copyright-infringing garment that, by the time a designer sues them (if they have the money to do so...), the item will already have sold and will already have been removed from the site. So, if this is how Shein sorts out legal matters, you wonder if there are real good intentions behind this project.
Some commentators stated indeed this is just another case of greenwashing. After all, donating money to cover the damages you cause to the environment, does not erase the damages, but it is just like claiming you're cleaning, while you're just sweeping your problems under the rug. The solution to overproduction is indeed producing less rather than donating money.
That said, Shein has made a major commitment, and other brands may want to focus on how to actively help at least one country to reduce the waste we in teh Global North produce and send to the Global South. Time will tell if Shein is turning from villainous into virtuous, but, in the meantime, we can all help reducing waste by not joining the perverse cycle of buying something cheap, wearing it for a short time and throwing it out because we are tired of it or because it is cheaper to throw it out than to wash it. One of the recurring slogans at environmental protests and demos is "There is no Planet B". Well, if we keep on overproducing and overconsuming, there won't actually be any planet where we can show off our painfully hip clothes and accessories.
Comments