You might’ve heard of the fast fashion retail brand Shein. TikTok is overflowing with Shein hauls, Facebook is littered with Shein adverts, and Shein is being touted as the future of fast fashion. The company itself is said to have raked in almost $10 billion – growing more than 100% in profits compared to its previous year.
Despite the growth in business, Shein has many shady practices. And now, the company is outright stealing designs from creators and artists online.
Independent crochet brand Elexiay posted on Instagram a side by side comparison of their design and Shein’s. One can see that Shein didn’t even bother to change up theirs. “It’s quite disheartening to see such talent and hard work reduced to a machine made copy,” Elexiay shared in the post.
Elexiay’s post went viral, and other artists from are coming forward to share the designs that Shein stole from them.
Purls PH’s version of Moon Chain Crochet’s pattern was also stolen by Shein. Fortunately, Shein took down the listing after the creator of the pattern emailed them.
Shein has also stolen an original knitted piece from ELIZATIONS.
And another crochet creation that was stolen by Shein includes a top from Reclamare – PH.
The knit and crochet community in Instagram is rallying behind these posts to shed some light on one of Shein’s many shady practices.
This is only a glimpse of what they have stolen but there are thousands of listings on Shein and we can only imagine the number of times they have stolen original designs from artists and small businesses. Big companies and fast fashion retailers are known to steal designs so they can sell them off as their own. Hopefully, continued awareness can be a step into the direction of change.
READ: Too Fast for Fashion: Why We Need to Rethink Our Wardrobe
