4 minute read
A case study of Ethical issues at SHEIN| Deepshika Sengupta
Deepshikha Sengupta
Deepshikha is an aspiring fashion designer at MIT ID Ujjain. Her style screams bold as she dons boots with kurtas and does not shy away from wearing colours. She was intrigued by the Versace and Iris Van Herpen’s collection and that is when she started her journey. She likes to call herself a ‘creative explorer’. Although young, she is passionate about sustainable and ethical fashion. She has big plans for today promising an ethical and fashionable tomorrow.
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Ethical Fashion is a big genre of fashion design creating boundaries and guidelines to maintain the racial, ecological and cultural ratio along with the laws and regulations of one's discrimination. Ethical fashion is a huge category having many branches of understanding, taking SHEIN as an example to acquire a knowledge of ethics; as the brand's prior records show, its ethics have been questioned time to time again and for good reason. Shein or SheInside is known as a B2C (Business-tocustomer) international mass fashion company which was launched in 2008 by Chris Xu in Nanjing in China having a fast growth along with its promotion of “fast fashion” which heavily goes against “sustainable fashion”.
Shein is particularly popular among Gen Zers and young Millennials as its pieces often go viral on social media after they are shared by influencers and content creators, thus increasing the chance to incorporate fast fashion in tempt mannerisms. The motto is "everyone can enjoy the beauty of fashion" which is highly needed in the brand itself but it is contradictory. The combination of Shein's low prices with global shipping truly makes fashion accessible to everyone but has defaulted in quality and the low range of sizes and also recently, the company has been affected by quite a few ethical issues and scandals along with it also offers an alarming lack of transparency about its production chain. To manage and maintain the fast-fashion chain, it has been heard that they are using chemicals in the garments for their longevity which can indirectly harm the users and degrade the quality of the materials. The Chinese company is plagued with reports of labour exploitation, abhorrent working conditions, and environmental abuse. But more publicly, it has developed a reputation for allegedly stealing designs from established global brands and small businesses and up-andcoming fashion designers, and in recent instances, it is selling the swastika symbols accessories.
According to the current time, where sustainable fashion along with the encouragement of slow fashion is on the move, Shein is going along with its own brand value, going opposite of the ethical norms which are established in mass production.
Going along with the fashion perspectives, there are the values of workers and their conditions which need to be taken into consideration. A brand should provide a level of security and comfort to the users and the brand establishes its product to only a certain community with a certain size range. Also, it is enhancing copies of designs of other designers without any authentication.
Ethical fashion is a chain that is created with both the suppliers, the consumers, and even the critics working all along for the betterment and beneficial future investments. Thus, “transparency and loyalty” are a branch that holds both the aspects of ‘inviting’ as well as a ‘repelling’ effect upon the consumers if utilized and understood correctly. It will only be valid if we let the consumers define what ethical fashion means to them according to their personal selves, and have brands commit to transparency. The more information brands provide, the more likely they are to be praised instead of criticized.
