A large, pink tulle prom dress for only thirty euros. The young woman next to me at the wedding talks with a twinkle in her eye about the bargain she has on from the Chinese webshop Shein (pronounced: sjie-in). Her dress is the same shade of pink as the actress’s admirable tulle look Tessa Thompson at the Met Gala earlier this month.
Coloring the catwalks from Valentino to Versace pink, and so follow social media. The color is completely in again. The bright ‘hot pink’ also dominates the feed of fashion giant Shein, which focuses on Gen-Z, the teens and twenties of today.
Shein constantly collects and analyzes customer data and produces trend-oriented collections at a staggering speed. More than a thousand articles are added to the website every day. Do people often look for pink outfits? Then Shein will have an extensive pink collection on his website in just a few days. And when that one pink shoulder bag of theirs goes viral on TikTok, they immediately ramp up production.
Without physical stores to display the clothes, Shein uses influencers to promote its products. Under the hashtag #sheinhaul you can see thousands of videos on TikTok in which influencers, large or small, open a thick plastic bag and try on Shein’s outfits. In the film they assemble screenshots of the extremely cheap products. Tops from only five euros and dresses under a tenner. I have to admit that when I see the abundance of new clothes I feel a vicarious dopamine rush. Now I also want to renew my entire summer wardrobe for the price that would allow me to buy just one bikini bottom from the environmentally conscious Filippa K (which costs an average of seventy euros).
As a young woman at the upper end of Generation Z (I’m from 1997), I get Shein stuff recommended on Instagram and TikTok every day. The brand is especially ubiquitous on the latter platform, which in recent years has become the natural habitat of many young people. TikTok was global in the first quarter of this year the most downloaded app, according to data from Sensor Tower. Shein is the only fashion brand in the same list.
The American news website Vox called The atmosphere on TikTok is “a hellscape of garbage where anything and everything has the potential to become a trend.” TikTok and the consumer market demand novelty, so there is a constant supply of trends on the platform.
The woman in the trendy evening dress next to me at the wedding is also a TikTokker fanatic, that’s where she found her outfit. She shows me her hem. The fabric is trimmed but not finished with stitching. At times, a chemical, unpleasant smell from the synthetic material reaches my nostrils. I think of Chinese sweatshops where the dress must have been made and how this algorithmically-driven fast-fashion retailer has taken environmentally-polluting overproduction to the next level.
You would really think that the environmentally conscious Generation Z, with its Greta Thunberg, sustainable straws and climate marches, would know better. Shein is also often enough on social media accused of stealing other designers’ work† The generation, known for its interest in authenticity, subsequently wears these stolen designs.
Meanwhile, my algorithm recommends dirt-cheap pink summer slippers from Shein. My finger keeps hovering over the ad, because with this inflation I could use a bargain. Hey Siri, how is the quality of Shein shoes?
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 23, 2022