Shein’s Paris debut reveals fashion’s biggest paradox: our craving for ethics colliding with endless consumption.
Let me be honest: I’ve never bought from Shein. Not because I’m some perfect sustainability saint—believe me, I’m not—but because something about it always felt… off. The endless scroll of €3 tops, the algorithmic precision of it all, the way it knows exactly what you want before you do. It’s tempting, sure. Thousands of products literally at your fingertips. One click. Done. But no.
And yet here we are in November 2025, watching Shein open its first permanent store in the world—not in some random city, but in Paris. In a historic department store across from City Hall. In the fashion capital of the world, home to the Paris Climate Agreement, where sustainability was supposed to be the future.
The audacity of it all is almost impressive.
THE STORE FRANCE DOESN'T WANT (BUT OPENED ANYWAY)
Picture this: Riot police stationed outside BHV department store on November 5th as protesters hold “Shame on Shein” signs, while hundreds of shoppers queue for hours to be among the first inside. Twelve French brands—including prominent makers like Figaret and Armor Lux—already pulling their products from BHV’s shelves in protest. Paris Deputy Mayor Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj calling Shein “contrary to the city’s values” right outside the store before its opening.
And on the same day the store opened? France announced it was suspending access to Shein’s online platform.
Let that sink in. France is trying to ban the website while simultaneously allowing the physical store to open. The French government initiated proceedings to suspend Shein “for as long as necessary for the platform to demonstrate to the authorities that all of its content is finally in compliance with our laws and regulations”, triggered by the discovery of childlike sex dolls and illegal weapons being sold on the site.
The hypocrisy is staggering. The logic is broken. And yet somehow, it’s the perfect metaphor for our entire relationship with fast fashion.
LET'S TALK NUMBERS (BECAUSE THEY'RE OBSCENE)
Shein isn’t just another fashion brand. It’s a machine. The company adds 500-2,000 new products daily—that’s over 300,000 new products per year. To put that in perspective, H&M releases approximately 4,500 new products annually. Shein releases 67 times more.
At any given time, Shein has 600,000 products for sale. Six hundred thousand. The average human brain can’t even conceptualize that number when it comes to clothing choices. And the average product costs just $9.
“Shein didn’t create fast fashion. It just perfected it for the algorithmic age.”
In 2024, Shein generated $38 billion in revenue globally. It holds a 50% share of the US fast fashion market and has 88.8 million active shoppers worldwide. The hashtag #sheinhaul has over 4.8 billion views on TikTok—billion with a B.
These aren’t just statistics. They’re symptoms of a system that’s fundamentally broken.
THE CONVENIENT BLINDNESS
Here’s what kills me: multiple investigations have uncovered that laborers at Shein’s factories work up to 75 hours per week. A 2022 Channel 4 investigation revealed this, and a 2024 follow-up by Swiss advocacy group Public Eye found it was still happening two years later. Another 2024 Reuters report revealed that two suppliers in Shein’s fashion chain were employing children under 16.
According to the nonprofit World Benchmarking Alliance, Shein failed to meet basic standards on human rights and working conditions, with incomplete supply-chain mapping that reduces transparency.
We know all this. It’s not hidden. It’s documented. Investigated. Verified.
And yet Ticia Ones, a regular Shein customer in Paris, told reporters outside the store opening: “We can see what we order, touch the items, it’s a good thing. I’m not going to comment on the quality, but price is definitely appealing”.
This is the cognitive dissonance we’re living in.
GEN Z'S IMPOSSIBLE DILEMMA
I get it. I really do. Gen Z is supposedly the most climate-conscious generation in history, yet 30% of Gen Z respondents in the US and UK reported shopping at Shein in the past 12 months.
They’re not hypocrites. They’re trapped.
They’re inheriting a planet on fire, facing a cost-of-living crisis, drowning in student debt, and told they need to look put-together for Instagram while making minimum wage. Frédéric Merlin, head of Société des Grands Magasins (the company that brought Shein to BHV), asked: “We’re speaking of a brand that is regularly bought by 25 million French customers, who are today considered bad people because they buy from this platform?”
He’s weaponizing this guilt. And it’s effective. Because the real question isn’t whether individual consumers are “bad people.” The question is: why is this the only option that feels accessible?
When sustainable brands price a basic t-shirt at €40-80 (which, let’s be clear, is often the actual cost of ethical production), and Shein prices it at €3, we’re not dealing with consumer choice. We’re dealing with systemic failure.
THE SYSTEM SHEIN REPRESENTS
Shein didn’t create fast fashion. It just perfected it for the algorithmic age.
The company uses AI to analyze trends and create new designs, working with over 3,000 suppliers. They only produce 100-200 pieces of each item at launch—if it doesn’t sell, they stop; if it does, they mass-produce. It’s fast fashion on steroids, turbocharged by machine learning and optimized for dopamine hits.
It’s also shipping 900,000 packages per day, each one traveling thousands of miles from factories in China to doorsteps worldwide. The environmental cost is catastrophic, but conveniently invisible.
And here’s the kicker: France passed a bill in June 2025 targeting “ultra-fast fashion” with measures like advertising bans, taxes on small imported parcels (up to €10 per garment by 2030), and stricter waste management rules. The Senate adopted it. The government notified the EU.
But when BHV wanted to open a Shein store? When Galeries Lafayette protested, calling Shein “in contradiction with their offer and their values,” SGM responded by ordering five Galeries Lafayette malls to rebrand as BHV.
Money talks. Ethics walk.
THE PHYSICAL STORE AS A TROJAN HORSE
Let’s talk about what’s really happening here. Shein opening a physical store in Paris isn’t about selling more clothes—they’re doing fine online. It’s about legitimacy.
Some see a “double irony” in Shein making landfall in Paris, home to the landmark climate agreement signed in 2016. But it’s not ironic. It’s strategic. If you can plant your flag in the heart of fashion’s moral capital, you’re no longer just a sketchy Chinese app. You’re a real brand.
A storeys-high poster showing SGM president Merlin with Shein boss Donald Tang was hung on the BHV façade last week, emblazoned with: “The poster that we shouldn’t have made?” It was positioned directly across from Paris City Hall—one of the most vocal opponents to Shein’s arrival.
“This isn't just business. It's provocation. It's trolling on a corporate scale.”
This isn’t just business. It’s provocation. It’s trolling on a corporate scale. And you know what? It worked. Because while France scrambles to suspend Shein’s website over sex dolls and weapons (which, yes, is absolutely unacceptable and horrifying), the physical store is open. Hundreds of shoppers streamed in on opening day under the watchful eye of riot police. An online petition opposing the opening surpassed 120,000 signatures, but the queues still formed.
WHAT FRANCE GETS WRONG (AND RIGHT)
France is trying. Sort of. The French Senate’s bill would ban ads for ultra-fast fashion brands, fine influencers who promote them, and add an environmental tax. Regulators already fined Shein €40 million for misleading advertising.
These are steps in the right direction. But they’re also band-aids on a gunshot wound.
Banning Shein’s website while allowing its physical store is peak political theater. It lets politicians look tough on fast fashion while avoiding the harder questions: Why is this business model legal at all? Why are we allowing companies to exploit labor, decimate the environment, and flood markets with disposable goods—then punishing them only when they accidentally sell sex dolls?
Thibaut Ledunois, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at the French federation of women’s ready-to-wear, said: “It’s a black day for our industry. Shein is developing a beautiful showcase in our country, justifying all the bad, and sad and horrible business that they develop all around the world”.
He’s right. But it’s not just Shein. It’s the entire system that made Shein possible—and profitable.
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
I don’t have clean hands here. None of us do. I’m writing this on a laptop made in China. I’ve bought fast fashion before—maybe not from Shein, but from brands that aren’t that different. I’ve been tempted by convenience, by price, by the algorithmic seduction of “you might also like.” This isn’t about individual guilt. It’s about collective responsibility.
“This isn't about individual guilt. It's about collective responsibility.”
The truth is, Shein exists because we—consumers, governments, the fashion industry—have tolerated a race to the bottom for decades. We’ve normalized disposability. We’ve accepted that someone, somewhere, pays the real cost for our €3 t-shirts. We’ve looked away from factory workers, from polluted rivers, from overflowing landfills.
And now Shein is standing in the middle of Paris, in a 19th-century department store, daring us to do something about it.
WHAT ACTUALLY NEEDS TO HAPPEN
Banning one website won’t fix this. Neither will shaming individual shoppers or slapping fines on Shein.
We need systemic change:
- Governments need to: Regulate the business model, not just the symptoms. Ban ultra-fast fashion production cycles that make sustainability impossible. Implement real extended producer responsibility—brands should pay for the full lifecycle of their products, including waste. Make supply chain transparency mandatory and enforce it with teeth.
- The industry needs to: Stop pretending that “sustainable” premium pricing is the only alternative. Innovate on making ethical fashion accessible. Support legislation that levels the playing field. Call out greenwashing aggressively, including your own.
- We, as consumers, need to: Stop waiting for perfect options before we act. Buy less. Choose better when we can. Demand more from brands and politicians. Build community around sustainable consumption instead of haul culture.
And maybe, just maybe, we need to get comfortable with the idea that we don’t need 600,000 clothing options.
THE QUESTION THAT HAUNTS ME
Every time I see a Shein haul video, every time I read about another store opening, every time someone defends it with “but it’s affordable,” I come back to the same question:
What are we really buying?
Is it just a €3 top? Or are we buying into a future where nothing lasts, nothing matters, and everything is disposable—including the people who make it?
French lawmaker Anne-Cécile Violland, who spearheaded the fast-fashion law, said: “We’ve been fighting this fight against Shein for two years and to see this brand set up in a historic building … that symbolizes [the] French textile industry, it’s an unacceptable provocation”.
She’s right. It is unacceptable.
The question is: what are we going to do about it?
This is a conversation we need to keep having—uncomfortable, complicated, and urgent. Share your thoughts, your struggles, your solutions. Let’s figure this out together.
What’s your take on Shein’s Paris store? Have you shopped there? What would actually make a difference?
Because the future we’re building, one cheap purchase at a time, is the one we’ll have to live in.
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