Everlane, a company that promised shoppers affordable and ethically defensible clothing, may be over as customers have known it.
Shoppers are rattled by reports that Everlane, the former direct-sales retailer that promised sustainably made clothes, is being purchased by fast-fashion giant Shein. The $100 million deal was made to absolve Everlane’s $90 million in debt, Puck’s Lauren Sherman reported. (Representatives for Everlane, its majority owner L Catterton and Shein have not confirmed the sale.)
For customers partial to its boxy T-shirts and sturdy jeans, Everlane’s affordable prices and commitment to “radical transparency” eased their guilt about buying new stuff. Since its launch in 2010, Everlane broke down pricing and production costs and traced its garments’ manufacturing and material origins, which customers could easily find on its site. Shein, a company routinely accused of shoddy quality and unsafe working conditions for its employees, feels incompatible with a brand built on sustainability. (The sustainable fashion watchdog group Good on You rated Everlane as “good” in terms of its sustainability, a holistic score that takes into account labor practices, waste output and materials, calculated from company-reported and third-party data and accreditations. The same site rated Shein as a brand to avoid.)
“This was a brand founded on ethical consumption, which is the complete opposite of what Shein stands for,” said Shawn Grain Carter, an associate professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology who teaches courses on sustainable style. “Fast fashion is the antithesis of sustainability. It’s cheap labor, it’s produced at any cost and rarely is it done in an ethical supply chain. So to have an acquisition by a company that goes directly against the core values of your core customer is problematic in many ways.”
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