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The Soviets had a problem. On March 5, 1940, Stalin had given the order to massacre 14,700 Polish officers, which his vicious secret police NKVD happily did. Job well done; until they lost Poland to the Nazis, who discovered some mass graves in the Katyn forest. Goebbels began using this to paint Britain’s ally as monsters (which, in hindsight, was fair). This was a disastrous public relations problem! And so, they turned to the press, and those like Ralph Parker of the Times of London, who traveled by caviar-supplied trains to Katyn, bedded Soviet honeypots and came back repeating the Soviet line.
This is the topic of Alan Philps’s new book, The Red Hotel; and as I watch TikTok influencers walk through Shein’s polished up sweatshops, attesting to how wonderful they are, despite the false and mean rumors of the West, I hear an eerie echo of that depressing, pathetic past. The reality — that Shein is the bleakest end of sweatshop-fueled fast-fashion, whose budget online offerings are made by workers paid less than four cents per item, working eighteen-hour days with no weekends — is an inconvenient marketing problem, to be polished out by our generation’s positive Parkers.
Many things have changed in the eighty years since the Katyn massacre. Communist Russia is dead, and dying further by the day, with our new Evil Empire being Communist China; Parker would be too boring, heteronormative and beauty-standard conforming for this moment. We need positivity! ✨Diversity! ✨ Plus, the Times is a far less effective funnel for propaganda than a Chinese video-feed/data sponge targeted at children. Fast fashion falls apart within but a few wears, but useful idiots are forever.
The chief example in Shein’s now-infamous TikTok campaign is a body-positive “confidence activist” from Los Angeles, who goes by the name Dani DMC. With half a million Instagram and YouTube followers, her styling videos include the usual Yeezy sneakers, $495 Balenciaga trucker hat, and $2,550 Balenciaga Le Cagole shoulder bag — she’s not a pleb, you know — but the clothes are an endless series of Amazon Fashion, Asos, Zara and, of course, Shein. With each new shipment, she releases yet another styling video, constantly keeping viewers appraised of the minute’s microtrend, and where to buy it. She makes dressing badly look effortless — were she not a “confidence activist,” she’d need one — and sweatshop fashion conglomerates are happy to throw money at her to support that effort.
This unrestrained shopping appetite, complete lack of taste, and endless vacuousness made Dani DMC the perfect “partner” for this new social media marketing campaign. For it, they invited a diverse cast of LA influencers to visit their most polished facilities, traveling by premium flights, fed with great catering, and sleeping in top Chinese hotels. On returning to the States, she said that “the China trip was one of the most life changing trips of her life,” totally reframing her understanding of the country.
In a sweet-talking gish-gallop, she relays how Shein showed them the whole process of making their clothes, “from beginning to end with my own two eyes;” that she was “really excited and impressed to see the working conditions” at the factory for Shein’s largest supplier; that she asked questions, like “an investigative journalist,” of an employee at Shein’s fabric cutting department; and got to visit the glass-covered “Shein Innovation Center”, which “blew. my. mind.” — and what a mind! She ends the video by saying:
I think my biggest takeaway from this trip is to be an independent thinker, get the facts, and see it with my own two eyes. There’s a narrative fed to us in the US and I am one who always likes to be open minded and seek the truth so I’m grateful for that about myself, and I hope the same for you guys.
A fellow influencer on the trip, @itsdestene_, said that the workers “weren’t even sweating.” The sweatshop joke in last year’s comedy Glass Onion wasn’t that good.
Aside from a few defenders (according to Mashable, the influencers were the real victims), most Western Twitter users remained stubbornly closed-minded, and weren’t receptive to the white-washing of CCP-linked fast-fashion propaganda. Rather, they mocked its shameless, cynical absurdity and made parody versions to this effect.
Nobody is under the illusion that your Nike sneakers or iPhone were made by happy monks; but nor do those companies release videos spinning their torturous manufacturing facilities as pleasant, polished playgrounds. Much like Parker, the video is so outrageous, not simply because of how shameless and flagrant these lies were, but how little they were bought for. Parker needed tail and some fish eggs; Dani needed catering and bad clothes.
In the aftermath, Dani has released three perfect videos. The first was a quick reaction video in a hotel, responding to the backlash. She’s fiery and stands up for herself against the moralistic masses. “I know exactly who I am, I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing,” she says, before stating that she “could never, will ever be a sell-out ever in my life.” And she’s not wrong; to “sell out” requires having values to forfeit.
She deleted this video, replacing it with a more polished affair, in which she reads a script of Shein PR points, held off-camera. She says that she’s helping Shein “debunk a lot of these rumors” and starts with the more ethically vital:
The first thing I wanna note is they take care of their creators and especially as a Plus Size Creator, I am about 60 percent of the time underpaid. And they have definitely not underpaid me.
This video was also deleted.
The third, dramatic response video is on Instagram. She starts with a staple of the influencer-apology-video genre — a deep sigh into camera, and quiet, less polished delivery — before progressing to address the concerns. She speaks about how much she wants to support plus-sized clothing, and is going to hold herself accountable. But she never apologizes. There’s no mention of sweatshops and abused workers and endorsing a company whose clothes disintegrate into landfill with a touch of a breeze or that it was fairly obvious that a brand selling $4 dresses couldn’t be paragons of ethical labor. But many comments were supportive. And though Dani has cut her ties with Shein, the free sweat-shop clothes will flow (just from other similarly disreputable sources) and life will move on.
Parker was pushed out of respectable journalism for his bootlicking, but fashion influencers love their boots, and there is no bar too low. The lack of apology is almost admirable, because she’s not going to change. Her entire personal business and public personality depends on these brands, and their cycle of constant, rabid overconsumption.
Through her styling videos, Dani advertises an endless amount of cheap affiliate-linked garbage, and tells you that, no matter your size, you’ll look fabulous in it. If you’re young, and sensitive about the way you look —particularly due to your weight — you’re the perfect prey for that. She’s not a “confidence activist,” but a tasteless marketer, getting rich off the insecurity of her followers, paid in dirty money.
By contrast, one of our greatest working fashion designers, Rick Owens, wrote that the second of “10 Rules for Style” reads:
Working out is modern couture. No outfit is going to make you look or feel as good as having a fit body. Buy less clothing and go to the gym instead.
Dani DMC and her representatives did not respond to interview requests; nor did Shein to my request to join their next factory-touring trip. If the good folks at Shein read this; I would still happily go. I’ll give a full and fair account, filled up on caviar, reading The Red Hotel on your first-class flight.
