The backlash against influencers erupted after one of the participants, Dani Carbonari, known more publicly as a @danidmc on Instagram, it went viral for a now-deleted video documenting her mid-June visit to several Shein facilities in the southern Chinese megacity of Guangzhou, including a factory she calls “Shein’s innovation center.”
“This trip to China has been one of the most life-changing trips of my life,” said Carbonari, a plus-size model and self-proclaimed “trusted activist” who has a combined following of more than 1.2 million followers, at the beginning of the video. “Seeing the whole process of Shein clothing from start to finish with my own eyes was very important to me.” Their images show clean, well-lit Shein facilities featuring smiling workers and high-tech tools.
At one point, the 30-year-old influencer refers to herself as an “investigative journalist” and shares an experience she had interviewing a woman who worked in Shein’s fabric cutting department. “She told me about her family, her lifestyle, her commute, her hours,” says Carbonari, adding that the worker was “very surprised by all the rumors that have been spreading in the US.”
Carbonari says she was “excited and impressed to see the working conditions” and what a “developed and complex company” Shein is. The most important thing about the trip, as Carbonari tells his followers, “is to be an independent thinker, know the facts and see it with your own eyes.”
“There is a narrative that is offered to us in the United States, and I always like to keep an open mind and seek the truth,” says Carbonari to conclude. “So I’m grateful for that myself and I hope the same for you.”
Carbonari’s dispatch largely resembles that of fellow travelers, including Aujené, Fernanda Stephany Campuzano, Kenya Freeman, Marina Saavedrawas and Destene Sudduth, who posted a series of videos last week claiming that negative reports about Shein’s Chinese factories are “misinformation”. ”, or saying that the employees they spoke to were “surprised” by their questions about working conditions.
“I asked them questions like, ‘What’s your work week like?’ how many hours do you work What is your commute? Most of them work, like, 8 to 6, and their commute is, like, 10 to 15 minutes, like normal,” Sudduth. he says in one of his videos about the trip. “I expected this facility to be so full of people that it was slaving away.”
However, many netizens were quick to call out the influencers, saying they were concerned about their unbridled positivity on what appears to be a highly orchestrated tour. Some critics called the trip a “publicity stunt” to fix Shein’s reputation, while others called it “straight up propaganda” marked by lies and misleading information.
Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas, professor of marketing and sustainable business at the British School of Fashion, described the behind-the-scenes video of the influencers as “rather dystopian”.
“I wonder if these influencers have ever made anything, or do I know anyone who works with their hands or in a factory? Did they need to fly around the world to see working class Chinese people making their clothes? he told The China Project. “We have to recognize that there is still a widespread belief, in the West, that factories in Asia are by definition unsustainable. However, there are examples of good practice in Asia, just as there are many sweatshops in the West. No I’m not sure if Shein’s backstage tour helps address or confirm those stereotypes.”
Carbonari’s initial reaction to the criticism was combative and dismissive. In a now deleted TikTok she published over the weekend, claiming he’s “a lot more aware of what’s going on behind the scenes than any of you guys because you don’t see what’s going on,” while stressing that he wasn’t paid for Shein’s trip. “I’ve seen things with my own eyes. If you think it’s propaganda, that’s fine,” says Carbonari.
But as the controversy continued, Carbonari softened his tone in an Instagram post video published on Monday. “[As] plus-sized influencers, we’re very happy to be included,” she says. “I’m sorry and sad that people who don’t know me are angry and upset,” she adds, admits she should have done more research before the trip, and urges Shein to be more transparent and answer the questions of his followers.
In one interview with CNN, Kenya Freeman, a designer who has sold clothes to Shein and was invited on the trip, confessed that the amount of hate online was so overwhelming that it was affecting her mental health.
The outrage toward influencers was somewhat misdirected, according to Elizabeth L. Cline, a professor of fashion politics at Columbia University and author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashiona book that investigates the environmental, social and economic costs of low-priced clothing.
“I’ve done show factory tours myself, as it’s common for clothing brands to show reporters and auditors only factories that are modern and have ideal working conditions,” Cline told The China Project. “Also, covering up the nasty parts of the clothing business is itself a fairly sophisticated multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s done through marketing, factory audits, training staff to say the right things and cover up other things and segmentation. the supply chain like this, where a handful of factories are on top and the rest are unethical and unregulated.”
“I wouldn’t expect influencers to know or see these tactics. These influencers weren’t the first to be duped – to what extent they were is my point,” he added. “Shein should be required to publish their full supply chain, and it should also be a requirement that they tell their influencers what aspects of their supply chain they are seeing and not seeing, at a minimum.”
Shein’s exponential growth and many controversies
Founded in the city of Nanjing in 2008 by Chris Xu, a Chinese-born entrepreneur with a background in SEO marketing, Shein began as a women’s clothing retailer called Sheinside, whose core business was manufacturing cheap wedding dresses and sell them. abroad for a great profit. It was not until 2012 that Shein began to establish its own supply chain system with the aim of becoming a fully integrated retailer.
In the years that followed, Shein evolved from a low-cost Chinese clothing retailer into a global online-only fashion powerhouse, growing sales from $10 billion in 2020 to $100 billion in 2022.
Shein’s biggest selling point, according to Radclyffe-Thomas, is the low price of its items. “When you’re targeting people who want a quick fashion fix, unfortunately price is a key driver of fashion consumption,” he said. “Cheap materials and use of import/export loopholes allow it to keep its prices low.”
Like his forebears who operate with a similar business model, Shein prides himself on the speed with which he churns out news styles. But when it comes to speed, the Chinese behemoth, now known as the definition of ultra-fast fashion, stands head and shoulders above other competitors in the same industry. While Zara launches about 10,000 new products a year, Shen updates her website with an average of 6,000 new styles every day.
The psychology of fashion, Cline said, is at the heart of Shein’s popularity. “Humans are incredibly social creatures, and why wouldn’t you want to be rewarded by society for looking hip and in turn cool and attractive, all while spending a little pocket change?” she said
In the age of social media, Shein’s early use of TikTok and his ability to market viral products also contributed to his success. By sending free items to influencers, the retailer is rewarded with a wealth of videos that serve as free promotion for the brand. “We have to take into account how many young people today live from the creation of content, which is of course a 24/7 cycle. Shein’s uninterrupted product delivery fits this bottomless need,” added Cline.
However, as Shein has grown, so has the scrutiny on his practices. In recent years, the Chinese company has come under fire for a litany of issues ranging from ripping off small label designs and producing swastika necklaces to causing unsustainable environmental burdens to selling goods contaminated with harmful chemicals.
But perhaps the biggest controversy is its treatment of workers. Last year, an undercover documentary produced by Britain’s Channel 4 found that at two of Shein’s factories in Guangzhou, where its supply chain and influencer travel is based, employees were working 18-hour days with one day off per month. and were paid a monthly base salary of 4,000 yuan ($552) to make 500 pieces of clothing a day.
There have also been allegations of forced labor. In May, a bipartisan group of two dozen U.S. representatives launched an effort to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt Shein’s planned IPO until it can demonstrate that its production does not involve forced labor belonging to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, who have been reported to have faced oppressive policies for years in China.
But for Shein, a billion-dollar company whose app has surpassed Amazon’s and whose sales are the biggest of any fashion brand in the world right now, the controversies have barely caused a slump in their sales department. Meanwhile, to counter the negative publicity, the brand has stepped up its efforts to control the narrative, spending millions to rebrand itself as socially and environmentally responsible.
“When you have that much money at your disposal, bending reality to make yourself look good or at least less bad isn’t that hard,” Cline said. He noted that given the track record of companies such as H&M, while Shein may experience a temporary drop in sales due to the scandals, it is likely to continue to rise with global shoppers in the long term.
“Rarely do controversies over working and environmental conditions permanently affect a company’s clothing sales,” he added. “Consumers have too many other things to consider, like price, for example.”
But is the backlash against the influencers and the brand journey they attend indicative of a broader shift in how global consumers view Shein? Radclyffe-Thomas said it’s hard to say. “Shein doesn’t seem to suffer from any negative publicity, so maybe the old adage of no publicity is that the bad publicity represents them. After all, we’re talking about Shein here again,” he said.
Cline, on the other hand, believed that the pushback is less about Shein’s campaign to boost his reputation than about the hypocrisy of fast fashion and big corporations in general, who are “too eager to market themselves as to socially responsible and constitutionally incapable of being so”. truly equitable and sustainable”.
“Fashion is always a starting point in society, and this backlash gets to something deeper. People are fed up with this greenwashing, corporate power and the lack of action and real change, and I’m with them,” Celine said. “What would work to stop Shein is a coordinated consumer campaign and a change in government policy. In other words, now that there is so much consumer interest in holding Shein accountable, we need to work through collective action to push the company in a really different direction.”
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