To think Shein has upped it’s game

[Ikeasucks]

Their stuff looks lovely (online on skinny models anyway) - have heard a few good things recently as i had written them off a few years ago. Anyone use them and happy with the product, quality, returns etc

i hate online clothes shop but the high street/town centers are dead in many places now so options are really limited often to just M&S, Next, H&M or Primark

SHEIN has also become a global top 5 retailer, its clothes are affordable for most of the majority earn a middle income & far less compared to the upper 10% of the population that can afford to shop more ethically and sustainably but it also poses the question that if we’re going to press about ethics we really need to also question how many of us here own an iPhone or other mobile phone manufacturered in China using similar labour chains or own numerous pairs of adidas in the many new colorways that are being pushed by this retailer for example where leather production also means more cows and mroe land cleared to hold the cows for the production of leather, many retailers quite large names in fact have all been called out for their poor choices in labour production over the years…the fact is that no one in the last 5 yrs could clearly compete as heavily for so many of the population to be shopping shop here. The prices can’t be matched due to the cost of fabrics and labour, and that labour would also I guess lose an income if SHEIN didn’t exist, the other issue today is that our high street is dead and it died some time ago! SHEIN has been the nail in the coffin but the internet was supercediing the high street since about 2005, most popular brands like new look, next (who also are no saints!) and H&M have remained fairly high in cost then in came primark which became hugely popular for the masses then that started to creep up & became less appealing to shoppers having to frequent our ghost town and drug infested towns and cities to shop there so people moved online to the closest thing which was SHEIN, but what didn’t happen was the brands people had shopped for decades that had to shut up shops bc of footfall who had online presence never altered their prices, M&S, H&M & New look for example seem more expensive than ever and it’s fine if you earn a fairly above avg income to afford that which you do need these days when you factor in the extortionate cost in property these days end just about everything else, if you can’t afford it only leaves a couple of other options like vinted and eBay etc. The cost of property, bills and aboit everything else has become beyond ridiculous! I get people on lower incomes still want to feel like the hard graft they put in for the little that’s left have something to look forward to at the end of the mth, also if we want to blame anyone it’s the government and leaders that allow low rate Labour to exist in the first place that’s where the real issu lies bc it’s gone on long enough! House prices also is an issue! if you were aware nationally prices have increased by almost 70% since 2004!!! People are getting nailed, we have consumerism esp the last 10 yrs abs shoved down our necks and Apple is one of the worst for it! We can’t keep up with the rate of churn of new phones and the cost & these things are still assembled in China like pretty much everything else! The gov should have seen where this was headed and either put a tariff on places like SHEIN long ago it would have forced people out of the price range to settle with what we already had or not to have bought it at all. Unethical labour sadly exists everywhere with SHEIN and many of the big brands also, philanthopy isn’t that great either until more recently since the development of social media which is terrible! The powers that be needed to pay and treat these people more fairly long long ago and that’s what angers me tbh if we want I talk about ethics why have we got government leaders allowing this consumption in the first place for decades or imposed the tariffs long ago to prevent people from accesing it??! It’s a big debate with no real clear answer except tariff it to drive demand down or ban it and people have to cut their cloth if they can’t afford to buy it they can’t afford to buy clothes is what it is but also ask yourself when the banks are making an abs fortune out of people with the rate of property inc I think that’s a more pressing topic we should be focusing more on bc we’re getting abs ripped and what can any of us do about it?! People want to dress nice I get that but most people haven’t sadly got the money, social media and life generally has upped the game in dress since since her rise of social media which drives consumerism so the issues here relaly is social media, people’s access to SM influence and the access to clothes produced unethically by all governments the ones that produce it and the ones that allow us access to buy it bc the government makes these things called tariffs so really is they cared enough they’d have done something aboit it and they haven’t so that’s the problem!!!

Do Shein sell full stops and paragraphs?

Jesus, I agree. Try reading that paragraph without taking a breath 😳

Also the old “oh but how many of us have an iPhone “ shite argument again …

I have an iPhone and wouldn’t touch shein or tempi with a barge pole. But my iPhone was second hand refurbed when i purchased it so already a few years old. I’ve had it for 3 and will keep it until I can no longer get IOS updates. Or until I drop it down the loo which is most likely to happen first. So I reckon I’ve another year at least of use. So 6 years use?

So actually that comparison is highly flawed. Plus most people need a phone of some sort, no one needs most of the planet and social harming crap those places churn out, as often as people I know who I know shop there seem to.

Also I’ve noticed that many people in RL who shop there also harp on about the death of the high street, bring back British made etc. but can’t actually be arsed to pay for it themselves .

English grammar is not my strong point, but I think the point of my contribution whether or not anyone agrees, which is more to the point, came over. Im sure breaths would have been taken throughout! Does it really matter fgs, talk about being precious! 😬

The kids’ denim is great!

It was so hard to read, I couldn't make head nor tail of your point to be honest. Paragraphs next time and read back what you've written.

The problem is that your wanting some item of clothing is not good enough grounds for buying immoral unethical shite.

I watched a documentary on Shein last week. The woman put a tracker in a bag she had bought and sent back. It went from China to her house in Europe then to a warehouse in Poland then to somewhere in the USA. It travelled over 10,000 miles in all, for one sodding handbag. That is not sustainable in a climate crisis.

(One old phone, seven years old. Will go for a refurb when I can no longer update it).

People just DON'T CARE. They are willing to turn a blind eye to slavery, to the most unsustainable business practices going, the stuff going into landfill, the poor quality, the ripping off designs and all the rest of it because Shein is cheap.

It's frustrating and appalling in equal measure.

Nobody cares about copyright infringement when they’re buying song lyric posters etc off Etsy. So I don’t know why you think they’d care about that particular aspect of Shein.

It’s just depressing isn’t it.
also the complete blind eye to how unsafe this crap is. Dangerous fabrics, metals that contain illegal levels of toxins. Yet they happily give it to their children.
I just do not understand it.

Buying some art with your favourite lyrics on is not comparable to buying a necklace from shein at all.

you’ll still listen to the song, and give the band money that way.
by not buying that necklace from the small business your not supporting that business at all you’ve given all the money to shein.

Was her point that if you have an iPhone you’re a hypocrite? I have a phone. Not an iPhone but I don’t know about the manufacturing circumstances but I know for certain Shein sell clothes made artificially cheap by using slave child labour and the shittest quality fabric they could get their hands on. I happily judge anyone who buys anything off shein and temu, and not in a good way.

Her point was the same as the justification that all Shein fans use.

That unless you are living in a cave and eating nettles then you are also consuming and that you have no right to an opinion.

Obvious bollocks.

See if that argument would hold up in court. Spoiler alert - it won’t.

Also the argument that clothing needs to be affordable. prices of clothing has gone down in the past 20 years. there was a few posts on insta lately showing clothing and adventures from the 90s. a skirt from new look was 19.99 and a dress from Debenhams was 100e. wages weren't great in the 90s we just didn't buy so much. heads of companies and consumers have driven the force in consumerism. they have forced the companies to make cheaper cheaper clothes. jenny sug -can't think of the rest of her name - on insta used to be the buyer of coats in top shop in its hey day found a coat in oxfam recently that she had helped create and manufacture for topshop. went into great detail of the fabric ( pure wool) the details in the sewing, buttons etc it was even made in the UK. then Philip what's his name took over he then brought in the cheaper manufacturing and materials she had no say in that. clothing can be affordable and sustainable we just need less and need to choose better. shein is not aimed at people who are poor its aimed at people who have spare money every month. they churn out 3 times more clothing then all the companies that own h&m zara etc combined. they also consume more fossile fuels than Toyota
do your research better

YABVU and if you care about the environment at all - you will do your research on the fast fashion industry.
There are enough garments in the world today to clothe the global population for the next six generations.

Try thrifting or Vinted if you need a new wardrobe - or make use of what you have already.

It is so true about cost. I was a student 1990-1995 and clothes were expensive. I was working in Debenhams as a Saturday assistant, earning about £3.50 an hour. I remember buying a pair of jeans for about £35 and agonising over that because it was 10 hours wages. I wore those jeans to death and as cut off shorts after they went through on the knees. And these weren't designer jeans, they were Chelsea Girl, Top Shop, Miss Selfridge price point.

If clothing had kept pace with wages, a standard pair of jeans would be £100. And they're not. Primark and the supermarkets are knocking out jeans for less than £20. People are spending the same of clothes but buying 5 pairs of jeans instead of 1, and discarding them after a short while because they are cheap and poorly-made. People feel entitled to having a new outfit for each party or occasion.

It makes me quite sick to be honest.

They are entirely different you aren’t doing the band out of any money. You are doing the small business out of their livelihood.
entirely different.

Wtf, no. You are literally making money from someone else’s talent/work/creation. You are taking money away from the artist by using their work without paying any sort of license fee for it.

This is absolutely not ok. There is a reason that intellectual property law is a thing.

side note, but tell that to fucking Sam fucking Altman

Yes, it was a really long version of "...but iPhones" and "no need for personal responsibility, the government should ban it". Took me a few tries to get it.

morally they are entirely different.

your buying some thing the band don’t sell, something they are never going to sell. they were never getting that money anyway. They are still getting money from you listening to the song and buying their music.

shein ripping off the design from the small seller. They sell the necklace (or item of clothes) you were going to buy from etsy, from the small seller. Means that small seller never gets that money that they were going to. They never get any recompense for their design, their intellectual property.

you can also argue the shein item risks devaluing and cheapening the brand of the original by not being the same quality as the original.

So are the plain trousers (I really want a load of back up pairs but they're sold out!!!)

If you're on a tight budget, some of the stuff is OK, but look at the fabric composition and the reviews before buying. I prefer Vinted these days though, you can get better quality clothes for a bargain price :)

I use TEMU.
Have had some lovely holiday dresses, and also household items.
I always read reviews, and generally stuff I've bought with lots of positive reviews, has been OK.
I also buy and sell on Vinted.
Unfortunately I dont have enough disposable income to buy on the High Street