00:00This is apropos. It is one of the French capital's most coveted retail spots and fast fashion giant
00:10Shein will soon be setting up shop there. To the dismay of competitors, ecologists and city mayor
00:16Annie Dalgo, the Chinese firm is opening its first ever physical boutique here in Paris at
00:22the BHV department store. Siobhan Silk has the story. It's one of the temples of Parisian shopping.
00:32The venerable BHV department store has been a mainstay of the historic Marais neighborhood
00:37for almost 170 years. So its decision to let ultra-fast fashion behemoth Shein set up shop
00:45has sparked a flurry of objections. It's seen as enough of a betrayal to get BHV
00:51unanimously kicked out of France's industry body for department stores, while several
00:56French brands announced they would pull their products from BHV in protest. And the news got
01:02store employees onto the street.
01:09There's real history in this store. Just two years ago, BHV was fully committed to our go-for-good
01:15policies, promoting products that were French, made in France, or at least artisanal.
01:22Shein doesn't align at all with the values of BHV. Shein, with its image of ultra-fast fashion
01:27and its unfair online competition that destroys jobs, simply doesn't fit.
01:32Ultra-fast, ultra-cheap and a seemingly endless supply of made-in-China throw-away fashion.
01:39In just a few years, Shein has become the world's biggest online clothing retailer.
01:44Tapping into demand like that is tempting for brick-and-mortar stores struggling to compete.
01:49Shein has already tested in-person retail in France with a number of pop-up shops,
01:54but the 1,200-square-metre BHV outlet, set to open next month, would be its first permanent
02:01physical presence in the country.
02:03BHV's parent company, SGM, also owns several branches of another of the Grande Dame of French
02:09department stores, Galerie Lafayette. SGM wants to install Shein in some of those stores too,
02:16but this time the objections are coming from inside. Galerie Lafayette's management says it
02:21doesn't want its store's name associated with Shein and has vowed to stop Shein at the doors.
02:27Well, for more, we're joined now by a fashion journalist, podcast host and author, Dana Thomas.
02:36Dana, thanks so much for being with us on the programme. So, in a nutshell, if you can, why the uproar?
02:43Well, the uproar is several reasons. First of all, Shein is one of the big forces in ultra-fast fashion,
02:51the leading force in ultra-fast fashion, which is about churning out clothes that are sort of not even like,
02:56you know, fast food, but like ultra-fast food, like the most high-processed junk food you can have.
03:02It's the junk food of fashion. It's super cheap. We burn through it, and it gets thrown into landfill
03:08where it doesn't biodegrade, and it's very toxic to the planet. And we're just being flooded by these
03:14clothes. So, the irony, the reason that they're doing this is because this summer and the French
03:22government, the French Senate, passed a law saying that it was going to charge 10 euros per garment
03:27purchased online, because until now, Shein has been primarily an online retailer. It didn't have
03:34stores. That was part of what made it so cheap and so easy. And so, what do they do to get around
03:40having to pay that extra fee? They open a store where they're going to pull in gazillions of people.
03:45I love that they're doing this just directly across the street from the Meribay, from the
03:50Hotel de Ville, where Mayor Annie Hildagot is, you know, having a meltdown over this. She'll be able
03:57to see it, you know, from her office. And I think that it really is sort of, you know, sticking out their
04:03tongue a bit at the government by doing it at the Bayash Bay, as opposed to some place else in town.
04:09And it really is quite a substantial retail space, isn't it? It's over a thousand
04:12square meters, prompting, as we saw. It's enormous.
04:16Yeah. And on the sixth floor. Why do you think the department store itself is actually doing this,
04:21though? By all accounts, it's not in great financial health at the moment.
04:27That's exactly it. All department stores, not just the Bayash Bay or the Gallery,
04:32but all department stores have been having a very difficult time with the advent of e-tailing,
04:40you know, the first online department store really was Net-a-Porter, and that's been about
04:4420 years. But now it's enormous. We have My Teresa, we have, you know, all sorts of, and Galleries
04:50Lafayette and the Bayash Bay are online. You don't need to go into the stores. And so these big old
04:5519th century stores are really struggling. They're either going super upmarket, like the Bon Marché
05:03and Harrods, where it's super luxury and it's just catering to very deep-pocketed tourists.
05:09But, you know, the Bayash Bay is for Parisians, and Parisians go less and less at department
05:14stores. So they needed to do something to pull people in. And what's the biggest thing that they
05:19could do? Bring in the cheapest fashion you can find that's kind of fun and easy to buy and,
05:25you know, sort of easy to digest, like fast, you know, in a way, the ice cream cone of fashion,
05:31and put it on this huge floor where you're just kind of swimming in this, and you can get it
05:37immediately. So it's super instant gratification, even more so than being, ordering it online.
05:43And, you know, you'd kind of think that this fast food, fast fashion retailer doesn't actually need
05:50the extra business. But let's talk about some of the criticisms, the many criticisms that are
05:55directed at it. And how can it be better regulated? You've mentioned that new initiative being brought
06:00in here in France, but the EU is also moving towards trying to clamp down on this ultra fast fashion.
06:10Yes, the EU is sending out some mixed messages right now on its battle against the environmental
06:15impact of the fashion industry, because fashion is one of the least regulated businesses out there.
06:21I mean, if you think about the automobile industry or the aviation industry that, you know, we know
06:25how many cars are made, we know how many planes are made, we have no idea how many clothes are made every
06:29year. Nobody has to actually report how many clothes they produce. We know it's somewhere between
06:3380 and 110 or 120 billion. But we don't know very much, because it's so unregulated. And, you know,
06:41in this wide supply, global supply chain, where the clothes are made don't have to have, you know,
06:47meet basic safety standards that we have in Europe or in the United States. It's really the wild,
06:53wild west. So this is one of the reasons that Shein has come under fire, because we don't really
06:57know how the clothes are made. We don't, we know that it's super cheap, but like, is there forced
07:01labor in the supply chain? It's all very opaque, right? And then they're just pushing more and more
07:07consumption. And we're already overproducing clothes. Like I said, we make about 100 billion
07:12items a year, only 80 billion or so, 20 billion are thrown into the landfills or into trash or into
07:18incinerators before they even hit the retail floor. We're producing way too many clothes. And Shein is
07:23just ratcheting that up by, by luring us into buying more that's even cheaper than what we, than
07:30you know, Zara and H&M and Gap.
07:32And this controversy, it doesn't appear to be putting off customers, does it? There were huge
07:37crowds at the pop-up store that we saw here in Paris during Fashion Week. And when, you know,
07:43people were asked about what they thought of this new shop, physical shop opening up permanently,
07:48nobody was really talking about their environmental concerns.
07:52And that's, that's one of the reasons I wrote my book Fashionopolis. So the consumers and shoppers
07:58would go, oh, I had no idea that this had such a huge impact on the planet and on people, on us.
08:04So, no, I mean, this is cheap thrills. This is cheap fun. It's fun to go shopping. It's one of
08:09our favorite pastimes. And this, and Shein is so inexpensive. It's cheaper than going to the movies.
08:14So, you know, why not go and have a good time and get these fun clothes and play dress up? And then
08:19when they look really terrible after you've worn them two or three times, you can throw them away and
08:22it doesn't matter because you only paid five euros for it, you know? So it's just, it's like,
08:28it's like, like I said, ice cream. It's like eating candy. It's the, you know, it's like
08:32the candy bin of fashion and it's fun, but it's bad. It's bad for you. Just like if you eat too much
08:39candy. And it is an affordable alternative for many people who say that they can't afford more
08:45expensive clothes, isn't it, Donna? But you can. You can. But it's just that these companies have
08:53been brain, have been brainwashing us to not pay as much as we should for clothing.
08:57And what would you say then to defenders of the likes of Shein? You say that, you know,
09:02putting taxes on these products, it won't make the companies find them more responsible. It just makes
09:07these products themselves more inaccessible.
09:10It's not making it more inaccessible. I mean, to add 10 euros to a shirt that only costs five is
09:16not making it, is not making it impossibly expensive to buy. You know, 10 euros is nothing.
09:23It's like the, it's like the $5 fee to go into Venice. It's really nothing, right? In the,
09:29in the bigger picture, if they were putting $1,000 on it, then, then we could be, or euros,
09:33we could be talking about something, you know, if there was a hundred percent, even if it was a
09:37hundred percent tariff, it would still be cheap. So, no, it's, um, that's, that's not a true
09:43argument. But at the same time, I do not think that it's going to, uh, slow people down from
09:48buying this stuff because it's still, you know, impossibly cheap and half the price of regular
09:52fast fashion or even a third or a fourth the price.
09:55And Dana, do you think, are other brands, just like, are, are other brands making more
10:02of an effort then to be more environmentally friendly, to be more ethical? If we talk about
10:06the likes of Zara, H&M, are they doing anything actually substantially better than these ultra
10:13fast fashion brands?
10:14Substantially better? No. Substantially better? No. They're making little efforts, tweaks, but
10:20you know, all of these companies, all these fast fashion companies, whether it's, you know,
10:25Zara and H&M, the old school, fast fashion, it's hard to believe we call them old school. Now they've
10:29been around for, well, H&M has been around for more than half a century, but, uh,
10:35they're there. And then the ultra fast fashion, their, their business models are based on volume,
10:41moving volume, pushing volume, selling, overselling, pushing consumption, pushing rapid consumption of
10:48these clothes. So as long as their business model is based on moving product, as much product as
10:53possible, more than we could ever wear, uh, they will never be responsible. They will never be,
10:59you know, sustainable. They will never be climate respectful. It's impossible because they're just
11:04putting out more product than, than we can, than the planet can absorb. And they're doing it in a way
11:11where workers are paid half a living wage and then we're shipping it around the world. So the carbon
11:16footprint on every garment is enormous and, you know, using toxic materials and, you know,
11:21petroleum based fabrics like patrol, like polyester and nylon, which is basically plastic and never
11:27biodegrades. And that's what's making these clothes so cheap because that fabric is so cheap. So no,
11:32even if they're doing like a conscious collection that makes up one, you know, maybe 1% of their
11:37production and less of their sales. And, and it's, you know, no, it's tiny until they completely change,
11:43they're radically changed, they're systematically change their business model. They will never be
11:50responsible brands. Dana, as ever, thanks so much for being with us on the program.
11:55That is Dana Thomas, fashion journalist, podcast host and author.
