SHEIN.
A brand that surely everyone in this day of age has heard of at least once thanks to its popularity on TikTok. The online shopping site climbed to the top of the fast-fashion totem pole in the summer of 2021 due to a new phenomenon and marketing ploy: video hauls.
SHIEN hauls took over the platform with some videos having over four billion views to date, with select videos having a few million likes. This clever marketing scheme is why we know what SHEIN is today, but what does that mean for the aftermath and excessive buying for these influencers’ $1000 hauls?
1. Thrift stores & SHEIN
It’s no secret or surprise that SHEIN has found its way to resale stores like Uptown Cheapskate and Plato’s Closet. On some of my own thrift trips in Athens, I always come across a shirt or two with the SHEIN logo, whether it be Plato’s or America’s Thrifts. What is problematic about this is that with SHEIN’s quality, which is rather poor, at which products are made means that these pieces have been worn either once or twice and then casually sold or donated. The fall of the SHEIN haul trend is directly related to the mass scale of SHEIN items in thrift stores. The next time you go thrifting, keep your eye out for the black and white tag and signature logo if you don’t believe me.
2. Shortened cyclical fashion trends
At the speed that SHEIN produces clothing (hint it’s at an alarmingly fast rate), fashion trends are having a very hard time keeping up with one another, quickly changing what is considered “fashionable” and redefining it as “cheugy” (or outdated) rather quickly. SHEIN isn’t just fast fashion, it is ultra-fast. Trends no longer are able to live out their yearly cycles but are instead being condensed to mere months and in extreme cases weeks (Monroe 2021). It’s harder than ever to stay “on trend”, which makes fighting buying from SHEIN a whole different battle with its extremely low costs and affordability.
3. Overconsumption
Our culture of overconsumption has created a very unhealthy relationship with the clothes we buy. We throw copious amounts of clothing away each year which in turn ends up in our landfill or in donation piles, hurting our wallets and our planet (Brown 2021). A more sustainable future should view clothes more as an investment and should grow with us and our taste in fashion, instead of being a casual, spur-of-the-moment purchase to simply post on Instagram and then part with immediately after. Tik Tok hauls promote overconsumption and for SHEIN to be one of the most popular fast fashion brands, thanks to Tik Tok’s not-so-subtle advertisement, it is increasingly problematic. Setting aside SHEIN’s questionable and rather inhumane ethics, clothes are treated as throwable, trendy pieces of cloth instead of laboriously manufactured outfits meant for longevity. (Photo from a first hand account of the SHEIN climate impact, courtesy of Elizabeth Swank from beach in FL.)
Tik Tok:
**4.2B views within the hashtag**
Examples:
*Note by no means are we attacking the content creators, merely showcasing the extent of the trend
Citations:
Brown, Rachel. “The Environmental Crisis Caused by Textile Waste.” RoadRunner Recycling, https://www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/textile-waste-environmental-crisis.
Monroe, Rachel. “Ultra-Fast Fashion Is Eating the World.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 Feb. 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/ultra-fast-fashion-is-eating-the-world/617794/.
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