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It’s a TikTok format the fashion set knows well. A sizable heap of clothing just delivered from an online retailer unpicked, reviewed and sometimes tried on by the creator, showing off their latest haul.
But when a French politician made an unboxing video last week, it was to make a point about overproduction and to push a bill he introduced to regulate fast fashion.
Looking straight into the camera, Antoine Vermorel-Marques, French National Assembly member for the Loire region, opens a box of men’s shoes while saying they’ve been treated with phthalates, chemicals that are endocrine disruptors and “can make us all sterile”. Pulling a pink baby outfit from a Shein bag, he continues: “It’s made with formaldehyde, a potential carcinogen for children”. Another Shein bag later, he holds a burgundy scarf — along with a boarding pass that he pulls out when discussing the carbon footprint generated by shipping the scarf from China. (Vermorel-Marques’s team explains that the products in the video are not actually from Shein; they’re proxies, with Shein packaging used to illustrate the point.)
It’s a gimmick designed to catch the attention of Gen Z and millennial shoppers who are driving the fast fashion business and Shein’s growth in particular. By pointing out the realities of these products — the volumes they are produced in as well as what they’re made of and the environmental toll of shipping and production — Vermorel-Marques is illustrating the issues his bill aims to address.
“Brands like Shein also use TikTok extensively for advertising. By parodying Shein’s hauls, I thought I’d use humour to denounce the use of influencers to target what is often a very young audience,” says Vermorel-Marques. “This social network is very popular with the younger generation, and has enabled me to give visibility to this bill among a section of the population that tends to stay away from politics.”
TikTok content
The bill, titled “Demodernising fast fashion with a bonus-malus system”, was introduced on 13 February and seeks to force brands that place over 1,000 styles on the market every day to pay a fee of €5 per product. The goal is to shift the market away from cheap, “disposable” clothing and to uplift brands that are trying to abide sustainability-centric models. Alongside the penalties, it would also introduce incentives to support local producers; the fast fashion penalty would theoretically help to finance the bonus for more responsible brands, and would be financially significant enough to have a real impact, something he says other laws have fallen short of doing, with the goal of forcing a reduction in collection drops and total production numbers.
“This bill was born out of discussions with textile entrepreneurs in my district, in the Loire department. They have shown real dynamism, are creating jobs and are committed to an industry that is more respectful of the planet and people. Unfortunately, they face unfair competition from brands like Shein, which pollute and create no jobs in France,” he says.
The Or Foundation has been sending a fashion “zombie” into stores with a clear message: publish your production volumes.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Shein said the company operates a production model that keeps waste to a minimum and that it complies with all relevant chemical standards in the US, Europe and elsewhere, and added: “Shein is committed to complying with French legislation and welcomes the opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue with relevant stakeholders in France.”
The bill is part of a larger push for “reciprocity of standards” that Vermorel-Marques says he’s been engaging in across sectors — to demand the same standards for imports as those imposed on locally made products, because otherwise (and the reality today is that) companies operating to French standards can’t compete with companies making products more cheaply overseas because they don’t have to abide by the same criteria. Without such reciprocity, sustainability efforts and policies are doomed to fail, he says.
“I am the son of a farmer. My father always accepted European standards. But he never understood why we continued to import products from abroad without control,” he says (another bill he’s introduced would ban agricultural imports that don’t meet the standards that France imposes on its own farmers). He’s heard the same sentiment among local textile producers that he heard from his father: “The manufacturers are clear: OK for more standards, but apply them at the borders.”
In the bill, he cites a Greenpeace analysis that found, of 42 garments purchased in five European countries, 15 per cent of them violated European chemical standards. “Tackling ultra-fast fashion means protecting French and European businesses. That’s why I’m proposing that we impose a penalty on fast fashion products and a bonus for clothes that respect our standards and create jobs in France.”
Finding “common ground”
The bill is not a cure-all. Katia Dayan Vladimirova, senior lecturer at the University of Geneva and founder of the Sustainable Fashion Consumption research network who speaks consistently about the need for legislation, says Vermorel-Marques’s bill offers potential to tackle part of the problem. It doesn’t address the systemic challenges facing the industry as a whole, however. “As a consumption researcher, I agree that rising prices can slow consumers down to some extent. However, we are talking about the very bottom of the price curve,” she says. “This increase will unlikely have any impact on the upper middle class and the wealthier consumers who are the main drivers of fashion overconsumption (and associated emissions).”
She would also like to see legislation that could target all retailers, including those with physical locations as opposed to those selling primarily online, because the number of products is important to account for, rather than penalising solely based on the number of styles released. That would require much more transparency, however, (on production volumes, for example) than currently exists.
One of the largest questions is who exactly will benefit from the incentives; if the €5 penalties feed into a fund meant to support “responsible” brands based in France, who is responsible for defining what responsible really means, as well as for ensuring those brands meet the criteria? It’s also unclear whether the bill will support communities in the Global South that already deal with a disproportionate amount of the world’s clothing waste, and so far have not benefited from legislation in the Global North designed to stem the problem.
“Defining what ‘sustainable’ is leaves a lot of room for interpretation and even greenwashing. French fast fashion companies greenwash through their teeth, like their foreign peers. It will be critical to make sure that the right kind of businesses and initiatives benefit from this bonus,” says Vladimirova.
Rallying public support on TikTok can help get the message across, says Vermorel-Marques, who started his account when he was elected as a way to promote his work at the French National Assembly; he had the idea for the fast fashion video after coming across dozens of unboxings and hauls on the platform from influencers who are paid by brands to release them.
The response has been positive, he says. “I believe this is the first time that young people are prescribers of ideas in my mandate. It’s a great democratic lesson. We have a top-down vision of politics, especially with regard to young people, whereas with social networks we can do generational bottom up,” he says. “This sequence has shown me that everyone can be interested in politics and legislative work. The challenge is to put forward concrete proposals that are relevant to the lives of our fellow citizens.”
Vermorel-Marques is optimistic about the bill’s fate, saying the issue of fashion waste, as well as the threats facing local producers, are not specific to a particular political party or interest. (The National Assembly is expected to debate the bill early March.) “The Horizons group at [the] National Assembly (centre-right) is also working on a bill to regulate ultra-fast fashion. I think this is a subject on which we can find common ground with many political groups, and which must be cross-party,” he says. “Everyone understands that this model is not sustainable, either for the environment and health, or for the preservation of our European clothing industry.”
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