The rise of fast fashion in recent years seems rapid and only inclining. With shops like Temu, Shein, and TikTok, the options for cheap clothes, or even cheap makeup and decor, seem endless. Shein is currently valued at $66 billion dollars. It appears impossible for these stores to provide thousands of products, from $1 socks to $2000 bed frames.

The rise of fast fashion in recent years seems rapid and only inclining. With shops like Temu, Shein, and TikTok, the options for cheap clothes, or even cheap makeup and decor, seem endless. Shein is currently valued at $66 billion dollars. It appears impossible for these stores to provide thousands of products, from $1 socks to $2000 bed frames.

Shein seems to be the first name that comes to mind when it comes to fast fashion. Shein’s rise in popularity is due to their expert marketing tactics like claiming their website is closing, raising prices to offer fake sales and providing $300 coupons for people who tell their friends to buy off of Shien.

Their deals and low prices convince people to buy from their website, despite the public knowledge that Shien uses child labor and sweatshops. This manipulation of information and the feeling of “getting a deal” allows the public to accept the business’s questionable morality in exchange for a cheap tee-shirt.

It seems to be no secret that Shein has had controversy regarding child labor since its rise in popularity. However, Shein stays in business by deflecting allegations to the smaller companies that physically make their clothes and focusing investigations on those small companies.

Despite this reputation, when a group of 17 DGS upperclassmen, of different genders and grades were asked, 17 out of 17 students had heard of Temu, Shein and Tik Tok shop.

From the same group, 88.2% of these students stated that they had bought from fast fashion at some point.

More than half stated that they buy from fast fashion once every few months, with around 30% stating they buy from fast fashion websites once or twice a year. 12% stated they purchase once or twice a month, with only one person stating that they had never bought a fast fashion item (6%).

Within this group, 88.2% of students stated they were more likely to buy from Shein, rather than Temu or Tik Tok shop; 11% named Tik Tok shop as their store of choice. None of the respondents stated that they would venture to Temu before the aforementioned stores to buy an item.

It seems that with remarkably low prices and almost every product imaginable, fast fashion is still on the rise, and -despite controversy- it’s not disappearing anytime soon.