Shein in Paris: has the fashion capital surrendered its soul?

The Walmartification of French fashion is now complete, said Sophie Coignard in Le Point (Paris). To widespread Parisian disgust, one of our most glamorous department stores, BHV, is now officially home to the Chinese online juggernaut Shein: it was in this landmark building that the ultra-fast-fashion company opened its first-ever bricks and mortar premises last week.

Don’t look on this as “just another retail opening”, said James Tidmarsh in The Spectator. “It’s cultural surrender.” For more than a century, BHV has “embodied a certain Parisian ideal” of accessible luxury, craftsmanship and good taste. “Now it’s flogging throwaway polyester” stitched in exploitative Asian factories; that which, until now, was only available on Shein’s website alongside 600,000 other cheap goods. “It is proof that Paris, once the world’s fashion capital, is now renting out its soul to Chinese algorithms.”

French is ‘addicted to fast fashion’

We French are supposedly scandalised by Shein’s arrival, said Erwan Seznec in Le Point. And certainly Shein’s grand opening was assailed by angry crowds protesting against the Asian giant’s vile labour and commercial practices. These are well documented: a recent investigation revealed extensive evidence of forced labour, with workers in some factories forced to work 18-hour shifts for just £0.03 an item. And the discovery that child-like sex dolls were being sold on Shein’s website resulted in a threat to ban the website in France unless they were removed.

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Yet for all the “virtuous rhetoric” and the snobbery, the French are still “addicted to fast fashion”: every single respondent in a recent survey admitted to buying clothing from a fast-fashion brand this year, whether it were China’s Shein and Temu, or more traditional European players such as H&M and Zara.

And fully 35% of French shoppers – enticed by its “rock-bottom prices”, targeted algorithms and “discounting techniques” – admit to having bought something from Shein itself last year, said Stéphane Vernay in Ouest-France (Rennes). They’re no doubt familiar with the accusations of deplorable behaviour levelled against Shein... “but who cares? The urge to buy is stronger.” Shein’s tills in Paris were ringing last week, and it now plans to open five more locations in France.

‘We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all’

You’d have thought Europe’s politicians would be trying to shield our manufacturers from this onslaught, said James Tidmarsh. Not a bit of it. In France and in the UK in particular, they’ve opened the door to the Chinese: they’ve handed our textile industry to companies such as Shein; they’ve opened our roads to carmakers such as BYD and MG – and they call it “progress”. Progress? Our manufacturers just can’t compete with these regulation-skirting companies. “We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all.”

Only the US president has clocked this “unprecedented trade offensive”, said Gaëtan de Capèle in Le Figaro (Paris). Trump has already “built a wall imposing a 100% tax on parcels from Shein and its acolytes”; shipments to the US have dropped 40% as a result. Yet for all “its unrivalled regulatory nit-picking”, Brussels won’t be able to halt the influx for another few years – by which time countless homegrown businesses will have gone to the wall.