Friday, June 30: Fast Fashion = Fast Trashion
This is why you can’t always trust an influencer to do any influencing.
The online fast fashion giant Shein, which sells “trendy” clothes at lower than low prices, has been criticized in the past for its reliance on unsustainable labor practices. Shein is valued at $66 billion, all by selling huge quantities of low-quality clothing at rock-bottom prices.
The brand has struggled to win over some shoppers who question the company’s ethics and sweatshop-adjacent culture. The documentary Inside The Shein Machine even took undercover cameras into factories where workers were pulling 17-hour shifts and earning a daily wage of about $20, only to be docked $16 for mistakes. So the company naturally decided to invite some influencers to tour its facilities over in China. When all their posts attempted to show an organized company of happy workers, the backlash was swift and heartless.
While Shein’s marketing stunt fell short, the company focused its energy on shielding the executives who should be the focus of any public scorn, as Amy Odell writes on Substack. “This is where influencers have been usefully employed: as the faces of faceless corporations with atrocious business practices and appalling environmental impact, widely accepted objects of our collective scorn.”
Side Items
KHAYAL: To honor the Pillars Fund Muslim Narrative Change Fellows’ contributions to Pillars Fund, the organization assembled a collection of essays and meditations that gave the fellows the freedom to explore what they found interesting. No restrictions, no limits. The result is Khayál: A Multimedia Collection by Muslim Creatives, a collection co-authored by the brilliant minds of the Muslim Narrative Change artists and featuring poetry, comics, and all kinds of storytelling
French War Zone: More than 400 people were arrested across France, officials said, as unrest continued to spread across major cities during a third night of riots triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop. At least three towns around Paris, including Clamart, Compiègne and Neuilly-sur-Marne, imposed full or partial night-time curfews as a police intelligence report predicted “widespread urban violence over the coming nights”