Shein 'sticking out their tongue' at government boutique at Paris department store, expert says

FRANCE 24 English

It’s one of the French capital’s most coveted retail spots – and fast-fashion giant Shein will soon be setting up shop there. To the dismay of competitors, environmentalists and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Chinese firm is opening its first-ever physical boutique in the city, inside the BHV department store. FRANCE 24’s Sharon Gaffney speaks with fashion editor Dana Thomas about Shein’s impact on fashion, consumption and the environment.  Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

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.

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