“I’m so willing to die in shein clothes.”

April 10, 2024 2:30 PM

Super Cute Please Like is a long, fascinating essay by Nicole Lipman in N+1 about fast fashion giant SHEIN, examining its clothes, business practices and history, but touching on fashion blogs, Sinophobia, the origins of fast fashion and gamification.
posted by Kattullus (34 comments total)

The DieWorkWear guy on X has a lot to say about Shein, none of it good. But basically it comes down to "you can't make clothes that cheaply without a lot of really horrendous externalities" including, but not limited to, how much of that clothing goes very quickly into the trash.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:59 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

I somehow ended up with a shein "overcoat" which I purchased second hand from an online consignment shop - it was marked as "other brands" not as shein, so I suppose that's how come I happened to pick it. Holy mother of god I have never touched a fabric as uncomfortable as the one this coat is made of. On the website photo it looked like wool. It is of course made entirely of plastic, but made to look like wool, so it's prickly plastic, which is somehow even more plasticky than normal plastic. Ugh ugh ugh ugh UGH. I hate having to throw it in the trash so it is still hanging in my closet, 6 weeks after it should have gone in the trash. No living creature should have to wear this. No living human should have had to make it. It's an abomination.
posted by MiraK at 3:03 PM on April 10 [14 favorites]

The sooner the government starts distributing gray, unisex jumpsuits, the better off we'll all be.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:23 PM on April 10 [13 favorites]

Oh come on, magenta
posted by trig at 3:32 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

I hate having to throw it in the trash so it is still hanging in my closet, 6 weeks after it should have gone in the trash.

Some sewing students might like having it, to take apart and use for practice. Or crafty people might shred it up and use as stuffing for something.
posted by trig at 3:44 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

I'm striving for made in America, union made, and mostly succeeding.
posted by Czjewel at 3:50 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

I had to wear a Shein dress as a bridesmaid's dress for a play. It lasted the length of the play, which i guess is all that really matters there.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:11 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

Avoid them! I heard an expose on WNYC about Shein and Temu about 6 months ago, about all the terrible business practices. Everything you can imagine... environment offenses, scamming credit cards, sweatshop labor, etc. Also the damage it's doing to American sellers by making consumers think they can pay almost nothing for products.
posted by Liquidwolf at 4:40 PM on April 10 [2 favorites]

Czjewel, any recommendations to pass along?
posted by It is regrettable that at 4:45 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

Accepting all of the issues that have been raised, here is what I need other companies to do that they do - they provide all of the measurements for every single item of clothing. That includes measurements for the garment itself, and also for the size of the person that would go into said garment. Not for the website, or for a brand, but every garment. Why can't other stores do that? I feel like it would save so much need for returns and disappointment when things don't fit.
posted by bizzyb at 5:53 PM on April 10 [9 favorites]

Is it called 'drip' from the blood coming off the seamstresses' hands, as they are crushed around the machine

Or is it called 'drip' from the methane condensate leaking poison brine onto Texas ranchland, from whence the oil came that makes it all?
posted by eustatic at 6:49 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

Also, international logistics is a solved fucking problem, goddamn

My grandad couldn't get enough oil over the Himalayan mountains into Chendu, in order to bomb Osaka from the west, but, hell.

We can find you that particular dress you wanted made of oil and naptha droplets which have circled the Earth 29 times by 9am tomorrow. It s freaking AMAZING.

They made this business grow by paying invoices on time, says a lot.

For me it underlines that the problem in Gaza is more of a "we have to stop dropshipping the missiles that bomb the starving people" problem than a "we have to somehow get the food to the starving people" problem
posted by eustatic at 7:02 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

The sooner the government starts distributing gray, unisex jumpsuits, the better off we'll all be.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:23 PM on April 10

I think the Grey jumpsuits have overthrown the government, to wit::

Deep in the product reviews for a pair of $15 gray sweatpants, one commenter writes, bafflingly: “I love these grey sweatpants ever since i received them out of the shein package. They go with almost everything and nice and baggy on my body. The color is easy to wash and can go with coloreds and whites which is very helpful in laundry.” Below, three photos are attached. They show three different women in three different pairs of pants, none of which match the product listing.
posted by eustatic at 7:37 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

I just wish the cheap manufacturing problems didn't extend so far into every clothing brand. I bought a bunch of pants when I started grad school, 2014 or so, and wore those until about 2020. Then a lot of them started coming apart. Since 2020 I have bought more cloths then in the last decade, probably decade and a half, as they keep ripping in the same ways (long tear in the crotch, parallel the seam). I don't think I'm walking or acting differently, and I'm a homebody nerd who wears minimal/no clothing at home, so I'm not putting these under a lot of strain. And I'm not trying to buy fast fashion! I've gotten some at name-brand clothing stores, including Marks, and a lot at Winners and I've never had cloths wear out so fast in my life.
posted by Canageek at 8:12 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

I just wish the cheap manufacturing problems didn't extend so far

The underwear I am wearing right now (TMI!) date from 2002. Zero wear, zero holes, flawless (and not available any longer because not sufficiently profitable).

…the New Old Stock versions are selling for >$100/pair, but that’s not enough money to restart production.
posted by aramaic at 8:52 PM on April 10 [2 favorites]

I just wish the cheap manufacturing problems didn't extend so far

I recently did a huge closet purge, in which I finally let go of the wardrobe of my 20s. And one thing I was really astonished by was how well made those clothes were. I had a bunch of work dresses from H&M, which I would have purchased in oh, 2004? Maybe even earlier. And these things were still in absolutely perfect shape. Fully lined, well-cut, zippers still working smoothly, not a loose thread on 'em. The linings were super pretty also!

I would have bought those things for maybe $20, $25 bucks apiece at my brokest, dressing for my first couple of jobs. I now make more than twice what I made then and pay much more for my clothing, and there is absolutely no way I'm getting the same value.

Every couple of years I find a gem -- Everlane had a real good run with sweaters for a minute in 2015; the original Madewell plain v-neck tees (ca 2018) were great. Those things are still in rotation. But it's very rare that I find anything that fits well, looks good, and feels good to wear, and I spend so. much. money.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:50 PM on April 10 [10 favorites]

It is regrettable that...Allamericanclothing.com
And Unionmadeclothing.com are good choices.
posted by Czjewel at 11:02 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

I see promotions for this type of company on Pinterest. Not Shein but similar brands, apparently recently created. The photos are the giveaway, models cropped to show half the face, backgrounds look like a wall in a European city. The outfit shown in a range of tasteful colors, all with the exact same curl of the hair and hand placement, obviously photoshopped. The price is much too cheap, $25 for a linen sundress than more likely costs $250. I’ve seen some gorgeous outfits, beautiful designs. I know they are scams but I want to know where’s the original from because that outfit exists somewhere.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:44 AM on April 11 [2 favorites]

It was uncanny to bounce between videos: here was a girl showing off her new halter, here was another girl giving a litany of reasons why it was unconscionable to buy clothes for so little money. Didn’t these TikTokers hear one another? But then again, how could they? “This is what we keep missing here in the whole conversation about sustainability in the industry,” Nick Anguelov, a professor of public policy from UMass Dartmouth, said to a Slate journalist writing about SHEIN in June. “We keep failing to understand that our customers are kids and they don’t give a fuck.”

This is it exactly.

My eldest niece is a SHEIN fiend. She orders countless packages of their clothing and her parents don't complain because it's so cheap. I could talk to her about the human cost, the environmental cost, but she's 15 and she will not give a shit about that. I have a SHEIN shirt I bought at a thrift store a while ago and it's fine? But something about the weave and the feel of it makes me skip over it when I go through my tops (I did a massive closet purge during lockdown and have only kept a handful of tops I know I will enjoy wearing). Reading this makes me want to get rid of it since I appear to not want to wear it, but I would feel terrible just chucking it away, adding to the problem.
posted by Kitteh at 4:49 AM on April 11 [3 favorites]

I feel like the overwhelming theme of life now is pollution. Commerce is polluted. Brands are polluted. Information is polluted. Culture is polluted. Politics is polluted. The environment is polluted. Air and Water are polluted. Food is polluted. We are polluted. Goddamn lunchables are polluted. Shein is just more of this.
posted by srboisvert at 5:50 AM on April 11 [11 favorites]

> I feel like the overwhelming theme of life now is pollution.

Kind of feel like it always has been. Lots of religions with doctrines about avoiding spiritual pollution and other types of purity laws.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:58 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Clothing in general has become so shoddy in the last 20 years that young people have no reason to expect better. I see influencers modeling garments that are made of cheap-looking fabrics and that fit terribly and people seem to just accept it.

I remember comments on a story about a pair of Levi jeans that were over a hundred years old. People doubted that the story was true because the only jeans they'd ever known probably wouldn't last five years.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:45 AM on April 11 [2 favorites]

It is regrettable that...Allamericanclothing.com
And Unionmadeclothing.com are good choices.

I think those sites actually do illustrate one of the barriers to people (like me!) who have the means and desire to get away from fast fashion. There is one single women's t-shirt on that Unionmade site. There is one single women's button-down shirt. And it comes in one color. And there are no size ranges or size charts offered. And you can't buy it on the site! You have to arrange to buy it through a distributor and hope they ship or are near you. You have to make buying one single t-shirt basically a part-time job and then likely pay quite a lot for it!

Even for those who would like to shop better and could afford to, the options simply don't exist anymore.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:40 AM on April 11 [10 favorites]

I am so discouraged on that front as well. I absolutely believe that the prices should be higher for non fast fashion well made clothes! But so much PLAINNESS in the clothes I am recommended (by friends and also from sites like Good on You). On top of that, often the prices are well out of my range. I'm sure that's a lovely summer dress, if it looks good on me. But it's a big ask at $150 for one dress.

Reviving my thrift store visits.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:02 AM on April 11

(Or sizing sometimes. It's mortifying to see a brand and be like oh cute, ok a little expensive, ok, shit. Only sizes 1 through 8.)
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:04 AM on April 11 [2 favorites]

One possible solution is to buy from second hand shops, either locally or online. It's more expensive these days than it used to be 7-8 years ago, for sure. But these types of stores are all still a great bargain compared to buying new and the selection is fantastic.
posted by MiraK at 11:37 AM on April 11 [3 favorites]

Even for those who would like to shop better and could afford to, the options simply don't exist anymore.

This is not a large-scale solution and it depends on where you live, but in some areas, if you're able and willing to pay more for clothes, you can probably find a seamstress or tailor who can make things for you to your taste and with fabrics that you choose, at prices comparable to or not too much higher than some of the better-quality retail clothes I've seen linked on AskMe. (How well people along the fabric production supply chain were paid is another question.)
posted by trig at 11:53 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

That would be awesome on one hand and devastating on the other. Finding fabric, getting someone who could design, getting fitted, the expense! I want to tear up thinking of it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:04 PM on April 11

Even for those who would like to shop better and could afford to, the options simply don't exist anymore.

Yep and you can't even use old heuristics of brands known for quality anymore because they have almost all been reputation mined to the point where they are near indistinguishable from the gobbledygook named dropshipped amazon merchant crap.

I have money now to buy some nicer tier stuff and I simply cannot find it reliably so I've given up.
posted by srboisvert at 12:08 PM on April 11 [4 favorites]

Finding fabric, getting someone who could design, getting fitted, the expense! I want to tear up thinking of it.

Design isn't necessarily an issue - you can bring in something you already own that you want a copy of, maybe with small changes, or browse sewing patterns online and find something you like the look of and bring it in to the seamstress/tailor. A lot of them will also have studied some design and have enough experience that you can describe or draw roughly what you want, or bring in some pictures, and they can make something along those lines without too much trouble.

Finding someone who's good and who you feel comfortable with can be hit or miss, but once you found them hopefully you wouldn't need to look again.

Fitting can be annoying, though if they're making another version of something they've already made for you before, or a copy of something you brought in, it can be quick and more like trying something on at a store to verify it fits okay.

Fabric - you can buy samples (swatches) online at your leisure and decide that way, or occasionally they'll have fabric on hand you can choose from, and sometimes they can buy it for you with your guidance. The first seamstress I ever went to (who unfortunately retired soon after I met her) liked to go fabric shopping with her customers; since she knew the stores and fabrics inside and out it was a pretty quick and painless experience.

But yeah, the expense can be a sticking point. It really depends where you live, though.

I did this a few times in the past (prices where I live can be cheaper than retail) and as far as experience goes it was sometimes good and sometimes frustrating, but as far as outcome I was able to get a type of clothes that I needed and couldn't find in stores anywhere, and I could customize the look.
posted by trig at 12:53 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

The amount of time alone you just outlined is way too unreasonable for me for one new item of clothing. I love the idea but it's not for me, or, truly, for most people.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:00 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

I know - it's just an option for anyone who can, or who's planning to get many variations of the same things made over the years. For me, since I knew exactly what I wanted (copies of existing stuff) and since I have such a hard time finding things in stores that actually fit, it usually took less time and frustration than finding something off the shelf.
posted by trig at 1:12 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

But these types of stores are all still a great bargain compared to buying new and the selection is fantastic.

I shop second-hand for a few reasons - primarily principles but also to see how it wears and because stiff things make me cry. But most things I want to buy are now more expensive used than new fast fashion right up to Gap-on-sale levels. It depends some on whether it’s a real thrift shop (not Savers/Value Village) or just second hand.

I can’t with SHEIN because I hate shopping so much, if they fall apart it bothers me.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:11 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

If quality is your prime consideration, check out mountaineering streetwear. It is having a moment when hard-wearing clothes look well tailored. Brands like Fjallraven, Icebreaker, Smartwool and Ibex are worth exploring. This vein of clothing is comfortable because it is designed for action. But no one will miss the outdoorsiness of the designs.
posted by SnowRottie at 10:28 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]