Photo: Courtesy Samuel Greenhill
“The Birth of Shein” by Samuel Greenhill is a protest piece in response to Shein's recent pop-up store in Kenwood Towne Centre.
Shein’s recent pop-up at Kenwood Towne Centre has ignited a fervorous response, not only from shoppers and fast-fashion critics, but also from a local artist who wants you to boycott the retail Goliath.
Shoppers arrived in droves to stand in long winding lines for a chance to shop Shein (pronounced SHE-in) products IRL from Aug. 10-13. But Shein's Kenwood Towne Centre pop-up, which took place the same weekend as the ultra-local City Flea, drew heavy criticism online and in protests against the company’s alleged human rights violations.
“If you've opened the internet in the last year, you'll know that this company is the largest of all fast fashion brands (not a flex)! They have countless human rights violations and are mass polluters,” wrote Emma Heines in an Aug. 11 Instagram post advertising a protest of the Shein pop-up. “Let's show up and let our community know it's not okay to support this incredibly harmful company.”
The retailer, which is normally only available online, is regarded as one of the world's biggest fast-fashion producers. Shein is headquartered in Singapore, but more than a million different clothing and accessory products are made in third-party factories across China under the Shein label. The company reportedly adds up to 10,000 new items to its site every day, all for extremely low prices. A new blouse or crop-top can run as low as $2.50, and accessories are commonly priced as low as $1.50.
While the cheap direct-to-consumer model allowed Shein to soar in sales through the pandemic lockup, a spokesperson for the company told CityBeat in an email that more than 4,000 people ended up attending Cincinnati's in-person pop-up event. Shein said the in-person pop-ups are “a way for customers to interact with the brand in person and discover new items from our sub-brands like SHEGLAM and GLOWMODE.”
While the cheap direct-to-consumer model allowed Shein to soar in sales through the pandemic lockup, a spokesperson for the company told CityBeat in an email that more than 4,000 people ended up attending Cincinnati's in-person pop-up event. Shein said the in-person pop-ups are “a way for customers to interact with the brand in person and discover new items from our sub-brands like SHEGLAM and GLOWMODE.”
“This is enraging! I’ll be there,” one user commented on the post about the pop-up protest.
Samuel Greenhill was also enraged by news of the pop-up.
“I was driving on [Highway 52 by Camp Washington] and saw a billboard advertising the Shein pop-up,” Greenhill told CityBeat. “My first reaction was just super frustrated and angry. Because I think it’s becoming so accessible for everyone, the exploitation seems so easy to take advantage of.”
“The Birth of Shein”
As a Cincinnati-based photographer, Greeenhill told CityBeat he wanted to channel that frustration into sending a message with his art. As seen on Greenhill’s Instagram, his work blends surrealist and documentary-style storytelling to evoke strong emotions. It was while Greenhill was in church that he began sketching out in his head a symbolic critique of Shein.
“My goal was to make an image that stops people from buying Shein,” he said. “It was kind of crazy how fast it came together. It all happened within the span of a week.”
Greenhill issued a model and crew call the very next day. Only four days after seeing the billboard, he said the photo was taken at Otto Armleder Memorial Park in Cincinnati’s Linwood neighborhood.
“I actually was really nervous about posting this photo and I was expecting it to flop,” Greenhill said. “I’m just surprised so many people feel the way I did and as passionately as I did.”
The end result is a photo titled “The Birth of Shein," an evocative play on “The Birth of Venus” by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli. Greenhill’s rendition of the Renaissance masterpiece depicts a Shein customer atop a pile of clothes at the edge of a river; despondent garment workers lean towards her, one holding a sewing machine, the others tossing or enveloped in fabric.
“'The Birth of Venus' has a very clear embedded image in a lot of people’s heads,” he said. “This is like this God coming up to the shoreline, and I felt like almost ironically taking advantage of that and making it where the consumer is treating themselves as a God without realizing the exploitation that it takes.”
The allegations against Shein
Numerous media reports point to allegations against Shein involving human rights violations, slave labor, environmental damage and unsafe materials used in the company’s products. In the 2022 British documentary Inside the Shein Machine: Untold, filmmakers found production employees working extreme hours for little pay. Workers were allegedly being paid around $20 a day to meet strict quotas while working 18-hour shifts, sometimes seven days a week. In 2021, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., found “elevated levels of chemicals” like lead, PFAS and phthalates in the company’s dirt-cheap clothing.
Shein told CityBeat in an emailed statement that the company has “zero tolerance” for slave labor.
“We take visibility across our entire supply chain seriously, and we are committed to respecting human rights and adhering to local laws in each market we operate in,” a spokesperson for the company told CityBeat in an email. “We have zero tolerance for forced labor. Our suppliers must adhere to a strict code of conduct that is aligned to the International Labour Organization’s core conventions."
The PR timing
The timing of Shein's Cincinnati pop-up fell soon after the brand drew criticism for a highly publicized influencer partnership.
In June, Shein flew a group of influencers from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to Guangzhou in southeast China. The trip was meant to show these influencers' millions of followers that Shein's often single-digit-priced apparel is produced ethically. In an apparent attempt to remedy the company’s human rights image, influencers were taken on a guided factory tour by Shein, meeting employees and learning about their day-to-day lives. But commenters were quick to point out how the entire trip was staged to appear transparent.
"They showed you what they wanted you to see," one commenter said below a video that glowed with Shein praise from Instagram Influencer Dani Carbonari.
Heavy backlash eventually caused Carbonari to walk back her endorsement of Shein, saying in a video posted on June 28, "I made a mistake, I made a huge mistake.”
Congress is getting involved
A new congressional report titled "Fast Fashion and the Uyghur Genocide," published in June, raises issues with Shein's ability to avoid U.S. import regulations that seek to keep slave-created products out of the U.S. marketplace, known as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The report claims Shein and Temu, another fast-fashion retailer out of China, use a loophole in the Tariff Act of 1930, known as the de minimis rule. The de minimis rule allows importers like Shein to avoid customs duties on incoming packages that are valued at less than $800.
Because the de minimis loophole only applies to direct-to-consumer goods, it's unclear if the clothes sold in Shein's Cincinnati pop-up have skirted customs compliance.
CityBeat asked Shein to explain how the clothes sold during their Cincinnati pop-up were shipped to the U.S., and the company responded simply by saying, “SHEIN products are shipped from our centralized warehouse to the U.S.”
When asked what the total sales numbers were for the Cincinnati pop-up event, Shein declined to disclose sales figures to CityBeat.
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