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Shein under fire as France seeks to slow down fast fashion

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Shein under fire as France seeks to slow down fast fashion
March 13, 2025
Article Body Text Fu Luo | 2025-03-13 20:59:00 Chinese ultra-fast fashion giant Shein is in hot water, facing potential drags from both sides of the Atlantic. <h3>Shein under fire as France seeks to slow down fast fashion</h3> On the morning of Feb. 12, 2025, Anne-Christelle Beauvois waited with a dozen other people outside the provincial government building near the Old Port of Marseille. On the other side of the wall, they believed, French President Emmanuel Macron was meeting with visiting Indian Prime Minister Modi. Beauvois, a 53-year-old former fashion designer now dedicated to promoting eco-friendly practices in the textile industry, was hoping to personally hand a unique postcard to Macron.The postcard was oversized, a collage made from newspaper and magazine letters that spelled out the phrase: “Stop lobbying, start producing responsible and sustainable clothing.”Her fellow protesters against fast fashion were drawn from environmental groups and entrepreneurs. They wanted to step up pressure on the government to pass the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill.France’s lower house of parliament had already unanimously passed the bill on March 14, 2024, which defines “fast fashion” and includes an environmental charge on low-cost items and a ban on fast fashion advertising.If it made it through the Senate, Christophe Béchu, then French Minister of Ecological Transition, said France would become “the first country in the world legislating to limit the excesses of ultra-fast fashion.” The bill, unprecedented in the global fashion industry, will impact the fast fashion business model and set a precedent for other European countries to follow. The centuries-old French fashion industry is now grappling with the challenges of deindustrialization.According to a 2018 <a href="https://ses.ens-lyon.fr/actualites/rapports-etudes-et-4-pages/lindustrie-textile-en-france-insee-octobre-2018" target="_self" rel="" title="https://ses.ens-lyon.fr/actualites/rapports-etudes-et-4-pages/lindustrie-textile-en-france-insee-octobre-2018">report</a> from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), the number of employees in the French textile industry has decreased by two-thirds over the past 20 years, with production falling by more than half. Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, mid-range clothing brands in France have undergone a major shake-up, with 1990s stalwarts like Kookaï, Camaïeu, and San Marina going bankrupt in recent years, triggering collective nostalgia and concern for the future of the industry in France.The culprit? Ultra-fast fashion trend led by the Chinese cross-border e-commerce platform Shein.In 2024, Shein became the most used website for shopping in France, surpassing the second-hand platform Vinted, which had topped the charts for three years, according to a survey conducted by the French shopping rebate app JokJoke on 700,000 of its users.Shein’s sales reached $24 billion in 2022, comparable to fast fashion giants like Zara, according to a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fast-fashion-juggernaut-sheins-sales-close-in-on-zara-h-m-11666949403" target="_self" rel="" title="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fast-fashion-juggernaut-sheins-sales-close-in-on-zara-h-m-11666949403">report</a>. But behind its stupefying success, controversies around illegal labor practices, environmental pollution and the encouragement of overconsumption, making Shein a focus for regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States.But a year later, the Senate has yet to put the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill on the agenda. In the meantime, Shein has launched an intensive public relations campaign in France and appointed Christophe Castaner, the former Minister of the Interior during Macron’s first term, as advisor to its corporate social responsibility committee, covering Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Castaner publicly criticized the bill, claiming it “adds new value-added taxes to affordable goods,” causing a stir in the clothing industry.“I hope to pass the postcard to Castaner via Macron, so he can read it every time he thinks about providing social and environmental consulting services to Shein,” Beauvois told WHYNOT with more than a hint of sarcasm.But she knew Shein wasn’t the only one responsible.“The entire fast fashion industry has problems,” she said. “Shein is just a catalyst; it is too big, with production on an unprecedented scale, which is shocking.”How to slow down fast fashion?On Feb. 2, 2024, French Congressman Antoine Vermorel-Marques posted a special <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@antoinevermorel42/video/7334662338022214945?is_from_webapp=1&web_id=7477501543143474710" rel="">unboxing video</a> to his TikTok account.The then 31-year old representative from the center-right party The Republicans, used the vertical short video format to half-jokingly “unbox” three items he purchased from Shein: a pair of shoes contaminated with phthalates that could lead to infertility, a baby outfit with excessive formaldehyde content posing cancer risks, and a scarf imported to France by plane. At the end of the video, he calls for legislation to impose punitive surcharges on fast fashion.This 57-second video quickly garnered over a million views and more than 100,000 likes.Meanwhile, another member of the center-right party Horizon, Anne-Cécile Violland, was also brewing a proposal for the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill, which was included in the voting agenda on March 14 2024.French politics had a turbulent year in 2024, marked by the dissolution of the National Assembly and a deadlock in government formation, as left, center, and right parties remained in a three-way standoff. Yet, the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill stood out as an exception, passing unanimously in the National Assembly and unexpectedly emerging as the strongest common ground for France’s environmental, economic, and political interests.The bill first attempts to define fast fashion as a “business model characterized by rapid updates of clothing and accessory products,” but it doesn’t specify a threshold for the number of updates needed to define fashion as “fast”. The bill requires businesses to provide information on the environmental impact of their products and encourages labeling for reuse and repair, aiming to raise consumer awareness of environmental issues and guidance on how to change consumption habits.It also bans advertising for fast fashion and introduces an environmental surcharge for products with the worst environmental impact. Pierre Condamine, who heads the campaign against overproduction at the Friends of the Earth, said the last two measures have sent panic through the fast fashion industry. “Shein and Temu launch aggressive marketing campaigns on social media, and now this bill is prohibiting all forms of direct or indirect fast fashion advertising, which will shake their business model to its core,” he told WHYNOT.For the environmental surcharge that would start at 5 euros per item, “By 2030, the surcharge will be 10 euros per item, making it difficult for low-cost fast fashion to sustain itself,” Condamine said.The bill will also hurt traditional fast fashion brands like Zara and French domestic brands like Decathlon and Kiabi, he said.The clothing industry is one of the most polluting industries, and this bill is not the first time France has taken action against the industry.In 2020, France enacted the Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law, prohibiting the destruction of unsold non-food items including clothing. The European Parliament followed suit, passing the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles resolution in mid-2023, ensuring that by 2030, textile products will primarily be made from recycled fibers, with minimal amounts going to landfill or being incinerated. It’s too early to say whether the EU or other countries will follow France’s lead if the Anti-Fast Fashion bill passes, but it certainly has sparked heated public debates elsewhere. In April 2024, the British fashion industry media Theindustry.fashion <a href="https://www.theindustry.fashion/french-fast-fashion-ban-could-the-uk-follow-suit-and-how-would-it-work/" target="_self" rel="" title="https://www.theindustry.fashion/french-fast-fashion-ban-could-the-uk-follow-suit-and-how-would-it-work/">discussed</a> whether the U.K. should consider enacting similar laws.Shein’s rebranding attempt“France has unique advantages in innovation and style, and is also known for leading the green economy, responsible consumption and the circular economy,” Shein Executive Chairman Donald Tang said in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro in April 2024, a month after the passage of the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill in the lower house of parliament.He flew to Paris for a weeklong PR campaign in a bid to salvage Shein’s image.“Shein controls the entire supply chain from raw material selection to delivery, enabling on-demand production and reducing unsold inventory, making it a model for reducing emissions,” Tang said, adding that in his view, the company’s unfavorable reputation is mainly due to a lack of understanding.Over the past year, Shein has been hiring in France, expanding its PR team and launching media campaigns to shake off the fast fashion label, and trying to rebrand itself as a young, innovative, and environmentally friendly industry disruptor.Shein’s former PR chief Marion Bouchut had described the company’s business model as “smart fashion” because less than 10% of what it produces is unsold, compared with unsold-inventory rates of 25-40% across the industry.Her successor Quentin Ruffat, who started at the beginning of this year, has instead described Shein as “fashion on demand,” and claimed that its unsold-inventory rates are actually in the region of 0-5%, trying to position it as the exact opposite of fast fashion. In his view, “fast fashion means mass production, leading to a large amount of inventories.”However, the company’s low unsold inventory rate and high efficiency stem less from technological innovation and more from its on-demand manufacturing model, where workers face unpredictable schedules and are often required to work late into the night to keep up with around-the-clock orders.A November 2021 report from the Swiss non-profit Public Eye found that workers in Shein’s supply chain could work up to 75 hours a week, or around 10 or 11 hours a day. And at the end of 2022, Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-21/shein-s-cotton-clothes-tied-to-xinjiang-china-region-accused-of-forced-labor" target="_self" rel="" title="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-21/shein-s-cotton-clothes-tied-to-xinjiang-china-region-accused-of-forced-labor">reported</a> that some of Shein’s products used cotton linked to forced labor in Xinjiang, China.Julia Faure, co-founder of the French sustainable clothing brand Loom, believes that Shein merely pushes the original fast fashion model to the extreme, and does not qualify as an industry disruptor. “The fast fashion model relies on two key factors: low prices and relentless consumer stimulation,” Faure said. “Shein has taken consumer stimulation to a whole new level, continuously releasing new products, spending heavily in advertising, and offering extensive promotions.”“Shein is just a more competitive H&M,” she told WHYNOT.Meanwhile some question Shein’s inventory figures.The French fashion union Alliance du Commerce, which represents 500 clothing brands, <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/pme-regions/actualite-pme/les-marques-de-mode-et-de-luxe-estiment-les-destructions-de-vetements-invendus-marginales-962381" target="_self" rel="" title="https://www.lesechos.fr/pme-regions/actualite-pme/les-marques-de-mode-et-de-luxe-estiment-les-destructions-de-vetements-invendus-marginales-962381">reported</a> in 2019 that of 624,000 tons of clothing placed on the market, unsold items were around 1-5%.Benjamin Simmenauer, a professor at the French Institute of Fashion, said that Although the fast fashion sector appears to have fewer unsold products than luxury brands, it still overproduces.“Fast fashion stimulates strong consumer desire, inducing consumers to buy large quantities of clothing and discard them quickly; it is essentially still a form of overproduction,” Simmenhauer told the French newspaper Libération.French fashion brands struggle to weather the stormWhen the Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh on Feb. 24, 2013, Julia Faure was working at Amazon’s Madrid branch. The accident led to the deaths of more than 1,000 textile workers, most of whom were employed by factories producing for Western clothing brands. The low wages and high-intensity working conditions of the deceased sparked global outrage, turning the tragedy into an emblem of injustice in the global fashion industry.It prompted Faure to reflect on the business model of fast fashion for the first time, planting the seeds that were to lead her in a different direction.Today, she is the co-founder of Loom, a French sustainable clothing brand established in 2017, whose watchword is “less is more.” Its business model stands in stark contrast to fast fashion: no advertising, no discounts, no new collections, no pre-sales, and all clothes made in France and Portugal. The brand primarily focuses on basic styles, with updates aimed mostly at improving quality.Faure is one of the few fashion entrepreneurs who actively participates in public discussions, calling for greater government regulation of the fashion industry, and is a vocal opponent of fast fashion. A rising star of French social entrepreneurship, she also serves as the head of the employer union Le Mouvement Impact France and the En Mode Climat association.In 2021, 150 heads of French clothing brands including Faure published an article in Le Monde titled “We Request Strong Regulation for Our Textile Brands,” exposing the race to the bottom in the clothing industry, where the more irresponsible the production methods, the greater the economic gain. They proposed increasing ecological contribution taxes and strategies to curb overconsumption, ideas that were to reappear later in the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill.“What is unique about France is that the main driving force behind this (anti-fast fashion) comes from the private sector,” Faure said, her voice full of conviction on the other end of the phone.For her, the Environmental Fashion Model Association, which brings together businesses, brands, and factories, is more efficient at lobbying for legislation than grassroots organizations.“As businesses, we can more easily get the attention of politicians, and have access to more internal information,” she said. “For example, when Shein claims that the textile industry has an unsold inventory rate of up to 40%, we know that this is completely unfounded.”France’s heightened sense of alert towards ultra-fast fashion is closely related to the unprecedented crisis in its domestic fashion industry. According to Le Monde, the sector has hemorrhaged 37,000 jobs over the past decade, with many major national brands shutting down since 2022.At the end of 2022, mid-range women’s brand Camaïeu went bankrupt, laying off 2,600 employees; in February 2023, footwear brand San Marina closed, resulting in 680 job losses; by the end of 2023, top fashion brand Kookaï entered restructuring, with 150 out of 220 employees losing their jobs; and in January 2024, mid-range footwear brand Minelli was sold to a small company, leading to a loss of 392 jobs.The collapse stems from multiple factors, including the rise of ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein, a lack of digital transformation, inflation, and the growing second-hand market.In the face of this crisis, the French textile industry has sought alternative ways to survive, championing ‘made-in-France’ clothing and fueling the rise of slow fashion.Take Loom, for example. Established eight years ago, the company currently has eight employees, yet it achieved a turnover of 3.5 million euros in 2023, with an annual growth rate exceeding 50%. Data from Atelier Chardon Savard shows that the sustainable fashion market has been steadily growing, reaching sales of 7.1 billion euros in 2022.Reshaping the fashion landscape or entrenching classism?In 2021, former French Interior Minister Castaner confidently declared in a media interview that the “Made in France” would be his top priority.Three years later, after becoming Shein’s advisor of its strategic advisory committees to support its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, he had changed his tune to openly undermining Made in France and claiming that it had long since lost its luster.Castaner was joined by Günther Oettinger, former EU budget commissioner, and later Nicole Guedj, former French Secretary of State for Justice, and Bernard Spitz, former head of international affairs at France’s largest employers' association Medef, in December 2024.Shein is making such aggressive moves “precisely because the Anti-Fast Fashion Bill strikes at the heart of the matter, and will reshape the textile industry,” Faure said, unfazed by the recent lobbying maneuvers and held high hopes for the bill. In February, the EU also launched an investigation into Shein over consumer protection issues, while a similar investigation into Temu, another Chinese ultra-fast fashion retailer, is already underway.Yet there have been no updates from the Senate, a year after the National Assembly unanimously passed the bill.The French Senate had been expected to vote on the bill on March 26 this year, but the latest agenda announced on Feb. 12 revealed that the vote had been canceled, with no reason given, prompting widespread speculation.Were French luxury giants concerned about potential Chinese retaliation putting pressure on the French government? Or was Castaner’s lobbying effective? The reason remains unclear, but Fanny Moizant, founder of the French second-hand website Vestiaire Collective, tweeted on Feb. 14: “Shein has won again,” which may reflect the thoughts of many in the industry.Fashion, a fusion of environment, society, economy, culture, and politics, serves as a mirror reflecting the dynamics of a society.The fact that France, which prides itself on its luxury goods, has been in the forefront of resistance to fast fashion, also sparks discussions about social class.On French social media, plus-size women are particularly annoyed with this bill. A user called Alisson wrote on X recently: “If France were less hostile to overweight people and could provide stylish plus-size clothing at reasonable prices (instead of those ugly elderly styles), perhaps people wouldn’t shop on Shein or Temu.” A plus-size influencer Anaïs Orsini pointed out that the bill is inherently classist and will exacerbate the wealth gap.Fashion isn’t just about macroeconomic growth. It has an impact on the daily lives of individuals. Yet there has been scant room in media coverage for people who consume fast fashion, although they are direct stakeholders in the debate. French sociologists maintain a more measured and restrained stance compared to industry leaders and politicians.Benjamin Simmenauer, a professor at the French Institute of Fashion, does not support fast fashion, but recently defended Shein in a media interview, saying that the brand’s demonization deprives poorer people of their fashion rights.“We are fighting against ultra-fast fashion but have never touched on the root of the problem, which is extreme economic inequality and the culture of ostentation that has peaked due to social media — where not having money means not existing,” Simmenauer said.Frédéric Godart, a sociologist and author of “A Sociology of Fashion”, told WHYNOT that he supports the right to fashion for everyone, while still believing that “all participants in the fashion industry should adhere to existing ethical and legal principles.”“Like Zara or H&M, Shein allows young people or those with limited income to access fashion,” Godart said. “It also reflects the decline in the actual living standards of some populations in France over the past two decades.”Is fashion related to wealth? Beauvois, a graduate of a prestigious design school in France, disagreed. She reminisced about her student days when, despite a tight budget, she managed to stay stylish by shopping at thrift stores.She recalled having spent “a fortune” on a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans as a teenager, wearing them for 15 years. They are still in her closet. “Fashion is ephemeral, but style is eternal,” Beauvois said, referencing the famous quote often attributed to Coco Chanel.To read the original story in Chinese, click <a href="https://www.wainao.me/wainao-reads/france-crackdown-on-fast-fashion-shein-03132025/" target="_self" rel="" title="https://www.wainao.me/wainao-reads/france-crackdown-on-fast-fashion-shein-03132025/">here</a>.
Content Type Article
Language English
NewsML Media Topics Arts, Culture, Entertainment and Media
Subtitles / Dubbing Available No
Network GNS
English Title Shein under fire as France seeks to slow down fast fashion
Embargo Date March 14, 2025 17:01 EDT
Byline Fu Luo
Brand / Language Service Global News Service