Fast fashion is a root cause of a huge amount of fabric waste, plastic waste, and cost shifting of waste streams to developing nations.
Not to say Shein isn't responding well to an economic niche. Just, that it has an externalised cost: disposal of clothes on a fashion whim is not a good thing.
I've noticed that fast fashion is also a gendered problem.
I'm often assured that "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean an inherent criticism of masculinity, and is a phrase that many institutions seem to think is a productive way to talk about problems they perceive as being male gendered.
I find it interesting to consider whether it would also be productive to refer to fast fashion as "toxic femininity", as it's often literally so, given pesticides, plastics, fertilisers.
I will not perhaps be the first to do this, however.
Absolutely, I've been on a quest to find fair trade and responsible clothing since I watched this show (sorry in Dutch): [0]. It's pretty clearly aimed at fashionable youth which I'm not but I still found it utterly confronting. The conditions that the workers live in (I say live but it's often just sleep and the rest is work) are crazy. They are sleeping above formalin baths. swimming in chemicals that slowly cause burn wounds, they live near rivers that are bright blue from dyes. Cotton fields take all water in an area away from humans who need it more.
Luckily there are alternatives, in the Netherlands I found [1] (apologies, also in Dutch), and there are many more of such companies. The crazy thing is that it's really not that expensive and they even make the clothing high quality so I have to shop less (I hate shopping). (Ok, so I never really was the target for fast fashion.) I'm open to other suggestions for responsible (quality) clothing.
Let's just tax carbon extraction and not worry about who's doing what with it.
Although I suppose there's a separate externality to creating friable material. The issue of discarding too much should be addressed with higher prices at the dump.
Sounds like it is true because of the word "fast" in fast fashion, but is it true? Is Shein really causing more fabric waste, plastic waste, and cost shifting of waste streams to developing nations than Old Navy or TJ Maxx or Pacific Sun or whichever cheap clothing stores was displaced by fast fashion outlets?
I think fast fashion is a behaviour of the individual consumer rather than an attribute of a particular brand though.
I suspect wherever you buy the clothes from they likely come from the same sweatshops and factories in Asia just with different markup.
Many people say Zara is fast fashion, yet I sit in the Zara clothes that have lasted me 2-3 years. We are fortunate to be able to produce high quality clothing incredibly cheaply due to the wonders of modern manufacturing and the brutal exploitation of foreign labour - yet that won't stop people throwing it in the bin to get the next shiny thing an 'influencer' has shilled.
> Fast fashion is a root cause of a huge amount of fabric waste, plastic waste, and cost shifting of waste streams to developing nations.
How does all of that waste compare to all of the waste involved in making your comment? Not just the infra required to host it and distribute it, but the devices required for you to make it. Kind of turning a blind eye to the amount of "cost shifting of waste streams to developing nations" that electronic devices create.
What I have noticed in Shein's app is that their pictures are meticulously done. Average stuff looks great with professionally done pictures with professional models. Not saying all their stuff is ordinary (they generally have good variety/design) but there is no hodgepodge mix and match of images of varying quality ranging from potato to great (e.g. compared to Alibaba/Shopee/Lazada/Aliexpress etc) - they all look awesome.
Quality of the product media is a huge influence on customer trust. AirBnb is a great case on that, as their effort to take professional photos of the listed properties had a huge positive impact on trust and conversion.
It's rather disturbing to read about so much undercutting and unethical practices to satisfy consumer demands. Makes me wish more people might become mindful of the impact of their purchases, so they make a conscious decision of whether or not to feed an industry that does business like this.
People (in general) mind their wallet, expecting anything more is futile. This is the same reason we are still having a debate about wearing masks or doing other things that benefit more then one self.
I would also argue that this is just another side effect of a society that has conditioned us to overwork ourselves to such a level of exhaustion that to spend less of our resources(money and/or time) will always feel logically justified.
At the heart of these issues is Shein’s aggressive business model. Comparisons to fast-fashion giants like H&M miss the point: it’s more like Amazon, operating a sprawling online marketplace that brings together around 6,000 Chinese clothing factories. It unites them with proprietary internal management software that collects near-instant feedback about which items are hits or misses
Never even heard of SHEIN before yesterday, when I happend to come a cross a well-researched video that uncovered how SHEIN exploits workers in chinese sewing sweat shops, and how most of their designs are stolen from small western fashion creatives.
So just like their "Amazon's Choice" counterparts... this kind of practice should be illegal on an international basis given the ecological and human impact but corporate exploitation is still going strong.
We need much more transparency about these practices, be it SHEIN, Amazon or Apple... I do doubt however that people would make more conscious consumer choices even if they know about it. The pandemic has made me very pessimisic.
But did you check how much chemical did they put in the clothes that make the cloths your kids are wearing? Highly likely is the amount they put in exceed the safe limit.
Fast fashion drives more waste, environmental harm and illegal (or just shady) labour practices. If the cost of externalities were captured in the price, then fast fashion probably wouldn't exist. You can't sell a $5 dress without lax environmental and labour standards.
Slow fashion on the other hand is about creating items that last for years, even decades. Each item might have greater environmental cost to produce, but the cost per wear is far lower.
It's all on a continuum, but what fast fashion changed was the structure of fashion seasons. When new models are developed and released on an industry agreed schedule (2 or 4 times a year), then there are clear benefits for planning, forecasting and managing the supply chain.
Having a cycle that cannot be planned and offers a short window to profit, creates strong incentives to compromise on these relatively stable systems. This is compounded by the vast majority of fashion brands outsourcing production, and often design, sourcing, etc. So if a new item appears to be about to become extremely popular:
- Don't have time (or want to maximise margins) to design an item? Copy someone else's.
- Don't have time to find a new factory? Offer the contract to one you know that doesn't have capacity to produce it safely. Or quickly pick a new one without doing any supply chain checks.
- Don't have time to source materials? Let the factory pick what they want without oversight.
- Factory owner doesn't have time to source additional labour? Secretly outsource to a cheaper factory with worse conditions to keep the margin. They might never get another contract anyway.
- Factory owner has an unrealistic price per unit to achieve? Just reduce the quality.
The lack of stability means that there are just no incentives for anyone to anything "right".
At least it isn't really subject to arbitrary moderation like on reddit. I have a pretty good idea what posts are sensible on hn.
However, I keep posting stuff on r/de (German subreddit) and mods remove it or let it pass at a whim even though very clear rules have been established over the years. Sometimes thread types which I have clearly seen before with hundreds of upvotes are removed because of violating content rules. The next day someone posts a picture of a frog and it's sitting at 2.6k upvotes (I think the Wednesday frog meme is super embarrassing but anyway...)
It's considered acceptable to repost an article for a second try, so long as you don't delete the original. It's mostly just timing, though I have bookmarked a few users' profiles for a shortcut to curation :)
> At some point in the 2020s ... we're going to learn that some sort of chemical or microscopic thing that’s inside everything, all around us, actually has some horrible health effect we never knew about before. My pick for what it’ll be? Microplastics – particularly the microplastics inside clothing, like athleisure.
> I have no idea what kind of health hazard it’ll pose, but it’ll be one that takes a long time to develop, and where childhood exposure gets linked in a study to some awful condition that happens to you later. It could be that all these cheap, fast-fashion clothes are secretly off-gassing some volatile organic compound that we breathe in and gives us cancer later, or maybe it could be something like physical micro plastic particles getting on our hands, and then into our stomach when we eat, and then it gets linked to some digestive disorder or intolerance, or maybe it kills our gut bacteria, or I dunno.
Couldn't agree more. (The rest of his 10 Predictions for 2020 missed the most important one...)
Shein is a Chinese company itself, so they wouldn't really be hypocritical here. Is it better or worse than an American company profiting off of Chinese goods at the expensive of American worker/economy and environment? I guess we could just keep the goods all out, but the distributors aren't going to survive if it is allowed and they don't do it.
I don't see how they do it "the expense of the American worker". It's a Chinese company founded in China by a Chinese man and selling worldwide online, it's perfectly normal for them to make their product in China.
Shein sells worldwide. H&M (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and other US brands don't ship to most countries in the world, if they ship overseas at all.
You should prefer the video on the same topic from Brust Raus, another funk channel, over this video series from Simplicissimus.
Simplicissimus got unusually emotional and preachy in this video, which I'm going to count against them because they have their own fashion brand with 80€+ sweaters "produced in Europe" (which means they couldn't even write produced in EU, which in turn means it's going to be produced in Turkey, under similarly bad conditions as Shein produces).
They didn't make such a series about any other fast fashion brand, and I'm pretty sure the reason they got this preachy is not because of the bad work conditions or environmental issues, but because they fear that SHEIN will copy their own designs.
I'm very disappointed that they made such a video, considering the entire industry of fast fashion as well as the parts of the fashion industry based on exclusivity are at fault, and it's not just limited to one company like Shein but a systemic problem. If you avoid SHEIN and buy from another fast fashion brand, or even CultureCulture, the label of the Simplicissimus authors, you've done nothing to avoid the problem.
Buy second hand products instead. Learn sewing. Fix old clothes instead of throwing them away.
Also see the Strg F documentary on Sneakerjagd how Nike just grinds up new unsold sneakers to ensure exclusivity and grinds up returns to avoid having to process them.
[+] [-] ggm|4 years ago|reply
Not to say Shein isn't responding well to an economic niche. Just, that it has an externalised cost: disposal of clothes on a fashion whim is not a good thing.
[+] [-] okeuro49|4 years ago|reply
I'm often assured that "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean an inherent criticism of masculinity, and is a phrase that many institutions seem to think is a productive way to talk about problems they perceive as being male gendered.
I find it interesting to consider whether it would also be productive to refer to fast fashion as "toxic femininity", as it's often literally so, given pesticides, plastics, fertilisers.
I will not perhaps be the first to do this, however.
[+] [-] teekert|4 years ago|reply
Luckily there are alternatives, in the Netherlands I found [1] (apologies, also in Dutch), and there are many more of such companies. The crazy thing is that it's really not that expensive and they even make the clothing high quality so I have to shop less (I hate shopping). (Ok, so I never really was the target for fast fashion.) I'm open to other suggestions for responsible (quality) clothing.
[0]: https://www.npo3.nl/genaaid/VPWON_1295027
[1]: https://skotfashion.com/nl/our-story/
[+] [-] xapata|4 years ago|reply
Although I suppose there's a separate externality to creating friable material. The issue of discarding too much should be addressed with higher prices at the dump.
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|4 years ago|reply
And water waste. [0]
Most people have no idea how water intensive the textile dyeing of their clothes really is.
Buy high quality clothes and wear them as long as possible.
[0] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-f...
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joostdecock|4 years ago|reply
Sure, it's perhaps a bit niche. But there's a thriving open source community at https://FreeSewing.org/
Full disclosure: I am the FreeSewing maintainer
[+] [-] schnitzelstoat|4 years ago|reply
I suspect wherever you buy the clothes from they likely come from the same sweatshops and factories in Asia just with different markup.
Many people say Zara is fast fashion, yet I sit in the Zara clothes that have lasted me 2-3 years. We are fortunate to be able to produce high quality clothing incredibly cheaply due to the wonders of modern manufacturing and the brutal exploitation of foreign labour - yet that won't stop people throwing it in the bin to get the next shiny thing an 'influencer' has shilled.
[+] [-] sydthrowaway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4oh9do|4 years ago|reply
How does all of that waste compare to all of the waste involved in making your comment? Not just the infra required to host it and distribute it, but the devices required for you to make it. Kind of turning a blind eye to the amount of "cost shifting of waste streams to developing nations" that electronic devices create.
[+] [-] noisy_boy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dakial1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fritztastic|4 years ago|reply
It's rather disturbing to read about so much undercutting and unethical practices to satisfy consumer demands. Makes me wish more people might become mindful of the impact of their purchases, so they make a conscious decision of whether or not to feed an industry that does business like this.
[+] [-] notyourwork|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serverlessmom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|4 years ago|reply
At the heart of these issues is Shein’s aggressive business model. Comparisons to fast-fashion giants like H&M miss the point: it’s more like Amazon, operating a sprawling online marketplace that brings together around 6,000 Chinese clothing factories. It unites them with proprietary internal management software that collects near-instant feedback about which items are hits or misses
[+] [-] dragonelite|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hooby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neuronic|4 years ago|reply
We need much more transparency about these practices, be it SHEIN, Amazon or Apple... I do doubt however that people would make more conscious consumer choices even if they know about it. The pandemic has made me very pessimisic.
[+] [-] gnicholas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phantomathkg|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQdonJ8yE1k
[+] [-] gromitss|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmos62|4 years ago|reply
Fashion is valuing things based on some definition or perception of popularity. It's chasing the dragon.
[+] [-] pharmakom|4 years ago|reply
Slow fashion on the other hand is about creating items that last for years, even decades. Each item might have greater environmental cost to produce, but the cost per wear is far lower.
[+] [-] tweetle_beetle|4 years ago|reply
Having a cycle that cannot be planned and offers a short window to profit, creates strong incentives to compromise on these relatively stable systems. This is compounded by the vast majority of fashion brands outsourcing production, and often design, sourcing, etc. So if a new item appears to be about to become extremely popular:
- Don't have time (or want to maximise margins) to design an item? Copy someone else's. - Don't have time to find a new factory? Offer the contract to one you know that doesn't have capacity to produce it safely. Or quickly pick a new one without doing any supply chain checks. - Don't have time to source materials? Let the factory pick what they want without oversight. - Factory owner doesn't have time to source additional labour? Secretly outsource to a cheaper factory with worse conditions to keep the margin. They might never get another contract anyway. - Factory owner has an unrealistic price per unit to achieve? Just reduce the quality.
The lack of stability means that there are just no incentives for anyone to anything "right".
[+] [-] cainxinth|4 years ago|reply
But anything can be corrupted. Fast fashion is an especially deleterious evolution of wearable art, imho.
[+] [-] greenie_beans|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29559044
[+] [-] neuronic|4 years ago|reply
However, I keep posting stuff on r/de (German subreddit) and mods remove it or let it pass at a whim even though very clear rules have been established over the years. Sometimes thread types which I have clearly seen before with hundreds of upvotes are removed because of violating content rules. The next day someone posts a picture of a frog and it's sitting at 2.6k upvotes (I think the Wednesday frog meme is super embarrassing but anyway...)
[+] [-] phnofive|4 years ago|reply
It's considered acceptable to repost an article for a second try, so long as you don't delete the original. It's mostly just timing, though I have bookmarked a few users' profiles for a shortcut to curation :)
[+] [-] numlock86|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: Reading the article and others about Shein my assumptions were apparently correct. Sigh.
[+] [-] peanut_worm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thoughtpeddler|4 years ago|reply
> At some point in the 2020s ... we're going to learn that some sort of chemical or microscopic thing that’s inside everything, all around us, actually has some horrible health effect we never knew about before. My pick for what it’ll be? Microplastics – particularly the microplastics inside clothing, like athleisure.
> I have no idea what kind of health hazard it’ll pose, but it’ll be one that takes a long time to develop, and where childhood exposure gets linked in a study to some awful condition that happens to you later. It could be that all these cheap, fast-fashion clothes are secretly off-gassing some volatile organic compound that we breathe in and gives us cancer later, or maybe it could be something like physical micro plastic particles getting on our hands, and then into our stomach when we eat, and then it gets linked to some digestive disorder or intolerance, or maybe it kills our gut bacteria, or I dunno.
Couldn't agree more. (The rest of his 10 Predictions for 2020 missed the most important one...)
[+] [-] coolso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] max48|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markdown|4 years ago|reply
Shein sells worldwide. H&M (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and other US brands don't ship to most countries in the world, if they ship overseas at all.
[+] [-] TheGigaChad|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Loranubi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuschku|4 years ago|reply
Simplicissimus got unusually emotional and preachy in this video, which I'm going to count against them because they have their own fashion brand with 80€+ sweaters "produced in Europe" (which means they couldn't even write produced in EU, which in turn means it's going to be produced in Turkey, under similarly bad conditions as Shein produces).
They didn't make such a series about any other fast fashion brand, and I'm pretty sure the reason they got this preachy is not because of the bad work conditions or environmental issues, but because they fear that SHEIN will copy their own designs.
I'm very disappointed that they made such a video, considering the entire industry of fast fashion as well as the parts of the fashion industry based on exclusivity are at fault, and it's not just limited to one company like Shein but a systemic problem. If you avoid SHEIN and buy from another fast fashion brand, or even CultureCulture, the label of the Simplicissimus authors, you've done nothing to avoid the problem.
Buy second hand products instead. Learn sewing. Fix old clothes instead of throwing them away.
Also see the Strg F documentary on Sneakerjagd how Nike just grinds up new unsold sneakers to ensure exclusivity and grinds up returns to avoid having to process them.
[+] [-] aaron695|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]