The changes in my daughters' clothing consumption habits have been dizzying in the last year and it's all Shein's fault.
Gone are the times when we went out as a family to buy clothes to start school, coats for the winter season or replace summer swimsuits.
Now each one chooses the articles of her preference in an online catalog that they access from an application on their mobile and that's it. They only call me to pay. And in less than 15 days, the exact order arrives, with a sizing system so fine-tuned that it fits them just as they had envisioned it.
I admit that shopping is not my favorite pastime, so solving the outfits of three teenagers with one click saves me hours of boring trips through several malls to get a certain size of pants or a model of jacket. It also saves me from waiting and the inconvenience of entering the changing rooms with the girls with the maximum number of garments allowed and leaving empty-handed.
(I've always said that fitting room lighting scares off sales, but we can discuss that another time.)
Another huge advantage of buying so-called "fast fashion" is that it is much cheaper. A cotton hoodie that costs between €15 and €30 ($17 and $35) at H&M or Pull&Bear, at Shein you can get between €9 and €15 ($10 and $17), which is a monumental saving for me considering that each item I have to multiply by 3 (number of daughters).
I am clear that the quality of a sweatshirt from the Spanish textile company Inditex, made in one of the factories in Spain, Portugal, Morocco or Turkey, is of better quality than those used by my daughters, which are manufactured in an unknown place in China.
But they prefer it that way. One of the key points is that Zara, Bershka or Stradivarius make few models of the different sizes and when my daughters go to the stores or look at something they like on the apps, they hardly find the size they need. You have to be ultra-thin to get into an XS blouse, which are usually left waiting on the racks.
That's why if they find something they like and it fits their body, they beg me to take it, even if the price is exorbitant.
In online shopping, the rules of the game change. Before placing an order online, I make it very clear what my general budget is and how much each one can buy. And works. They respect the amount discussed in exchange for freely deciding the type of clothing they want to wear.
And although they do not pay out of pocket, they know exactly how much their clothes cost, how to shop for discounts with the points and coupons bonus system.
But the comfort of buying clothes with the models and colors of the season at a very low cost has another type of price that is not calculated in cash.
I am aware that with each order from Shein we stopped supporting the local industry and moved further and further away to quality designs that were perhaps expensive, but made up for in durability.
Many point to the powerful Chinese textile industry as the cause of all current ills. But we must remember that fast fashion began at the end of the last century when giants such as Zara, H&M and Primark began to reduce the design, manufacturing and distribution cycles.
These changes made it possible to introduce novelties every season while keeping the merchandise fashionable and low-priced.
To shorten a process that used to take six months to a couple of weeks, brands strategized to meet the growing demand for affordable clothing and placed large textile operations in developing countries. American and European companies saved billions of dollars by outsourcing cheap labor, which did not have the same wages and benefits as workers at their headquarters.
Shein was created in 2008 in the Chinese city of Nanjing, but it was catapulted to international fame thanks to the promotion carried out by the influencers of the TikTok social network. Its catalog is so vast that it incorporates some 5,000 items every day and its reach is so wide that it distributes its merchandise in 220 countries.
In 2020, when the world was paralyzed by the COVID pandemic, Shein sold 10 billion dollars, in its eighth consecutive year of growth. In June 2021, Shein surpassed Amazon in downloading its app on the iOS App Store in the United States and 50 other countries.
It is undoubtedly the most mentioned brand on Facebook and Tiktok and its website is the most visited in the world of fashion.
But its detractors accuse the Chinese giant of being a polluter and of producing disposable and synthetic clothing that accumulates as toxic waste in landfills and the planet's oceans. Although it is not a consolation, it must be said that Shein is not the only one to blame. The entire fast fashion industry is noted for adding up to 10 percent of the planet's carbon thrills. They argue that's because most people throw away the 150 billion units of fast clothing after just a few uses because it's so cheap it can be quickly replaced.
Another no less serious point is the chemicals used by fast fashion brands to prevent wrinkles. One such substance is formaldehyde, a substance that can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, or cause breathing problems in people with asthma.
Questionable labor practices is another big weakness of the fast clothing industry. The speed of delivery means that there are people working under great pressure to deliver orders. Also, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you can pay a seamstress to supervise the sewing process of a shirt that costs €5 ($5.8) very little.
I've come to think that avoiding Shein, Primark or Topshop is like removing screens and the digital world from your life.
I try to find references in my family's shopping habits and they are not applicable in our complicated European life. To buy good quality jeans and underwear, my parents would get us in their car during school holidays and we would drive 850 km in 15 hours from Caracas to Cúcuta, a city bordering Venezuela, where excellent Colombian brands were available at unbeatable prices.
My mother sewed our costumes by hand at Carnival because there was no possibility of buying a satin fantasy in the Chinese on the corner. Because she herself admits that today she would spend more money on the fabrics than buying the finished design.
For special moments, such as graduations, baptisms and communions, there were professional seamstresses. And although I recognize that there is nothing like a suit made to measure for you, I do not have the resources to pay for beautiful dresses that my daughters would surely wear only once.
So I think there is nothing I can do to avoid buying quick clothes for my whole family. What I can do and have done since they were little is that there is no need to donate last winter's coat if it is in perfect condition and they can continue using it this year. I also insist that they buy only what they need and use it to death.
But beyond my advice, I find that my daughters (and many teenagers I know) are sophisticated consumers who know how to use technology to their advantage and have a good understanding of when a product is good value for money.
They are not married to a brand or a certain way of buying. They want comfort and a good price. And that is no small thing for three young girls from generation Z.
