Column: Do what’s right for the planet or for your pocketbook? A fast-fashion dilemma
LA TimesI realized I had a problem with internet shopping the day my 13-year-old niece looked at the packing slip in a box that had just arrived and yelled, “What — $200 for a pair of jeans? In May, Reuters reported that a bipartisan House group asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to stop the IPO until Shein proves that it does not use Uyghur forced labor. Last year, Bloomberg News sent off some Shein garments to a lab that reported that the cotton came from the region in China where Uyghurs have been subject to repression, forced labor and imprisonment. Still, in a report released in June, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party implicated both Shein and its fast-growing competitor, Temu, in shipping products most probably made with forced labor. That expertise is apparent in most of the coverage of the brand I’ve read: Gushing interviews with the founders, who hang out with A-listers, live in architecturally important homes and host exclusive dinner parties for influential members of the fashion press while proclaiming that they are down-to-earth guys searching for the perfect pair of skinny jeans.
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