By Rachel Tashjian
It began like any other influencer trip.
A carefully curated group of six content creators, representing an array of body types and backgrounds, tucked into their seats on a flight and gleefully documented the perks of business class. But the destination was not a tropical paradise or swanky hotel.
"Today's the day! We are going to China with Shein!" exclaimed Dani Carbonari, a self-described "confidence activist" in a now-deleted video for her nearly half-million Instagram followers.
They were headed to Guangzhou to visit a factory that produces clothing for Shein, the fast-fashion giant that has quietly infiltrated the wardrobes of women across the globe, winning them over with shockingly low prices and pervasive TikTok advertising.
Over four days, the influencers - Carbonari, Destene Sudduth, Aujené, Fernanda Stephany Campuzano, Kenya Freeman and Marina Saavedra, who are described in a Shein Instagram post as "partners" - toured the city, sharing footage on their accounts from inside a sparkling clean, brightly lit factory owned by one of the brand's manufacturing partners, plus an "innovation centre" and a warehouse, along with revelations from seeing the inner workings of fast-fashion production up close.
They hashtagged their posts #Shein101, and an animation from the brand showed a composition notebook titled as such, filled with feel-good corporate language such as "supply chain empowerment programs" and a #BlackLivesMatter illustration.
Brands increasingly invite influencers behind the scenes for such trips to "tell the stories that maybe they have a hard time telling themselves," said James Nord, founder of the influencer marketing agency Fohr Card.
The itinerary appeared engineered to address the most frequent criticisms levelled at Shein from consumers, activists and even some lawmakers: that its clothing is quickly and cheaply manufactured, with dangerous materials; that it uses enslaved person labour and child workers; and that its factories have abhorrent working conditions.
That's not what the influencers said they saw. Instead, their videos sounded like talking points from a press release.
"The China trip has been one of the most life-changing trips of my life," Carbonari said in a video, since deleted.
She concluded: "My biggest takeaway from this trip is to be an independent thinker, get the facts and see it with your own two eyes."
In her videos, Carbonari said she spoke to a woman who worked in the fabric department who was "very surprised by all of the rumours that have spread in the US" (Shein operates about 6 000 factories in China.)
But the accusations are far from rumours. The British public broadcaster Channel 4's 2022 documentary "Inside the Shein Machine" sent secret cameras inside the company's factories and found that workers were clocking 18-hour days with just one day off per month, making 500 pieces of clothing per day and earning pennies per garment.
"I'm not going to lie, I really expected it to look like it does in the movies, like really dark and dingy, but I was really surprised to see each piece handled with care," said Sudduth in a video.
"Child labour and fair wages are serious topics and were some of the q's you guys were curious about and wanted me to ask," wrote Ajuné in the caption of her now-deleted post.
"When asking a few of the workers & employees about these topics everyone we came across was content with their salary and the idea of child labour was something they looked at me crazy for y'all."
The backlash came quickly from fast-fashion experts who were outraged that influencers were blithely reciting the public relations spin of the controversial company.
Writers Aja Barber and Cora Harrington picked apart the PR optics of the invited influencers and called it propaganda.
One TikToker parodied the video by dressing in turn-of-the-century clothes and pretending she was taking a similar trip to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a sweatshop that was the scene of a deadly fire in 1911. Others gathered evidence alleging that the factory was staged.
Some of the attendees turned off the comments on their posts about the trip, and even deleted their posts, but the comments continue.
"How do you call yourself an 'activist' while accepting brand deals/money from a corporation that is ruining peoples lives and the environment?" read one on a post of Carbonari's.
Shein is not only in the influencer crosshairs. Two bills were introduced in US Congress earlier this month that would affect its shipping costs, and lawmakers including Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have urged their colleagues to scrutinize Shein.
Repuplican Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) has made the company a focus of his newly formed Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Shein defended the trip, denying that the influencers were given talking points. "Shein is committed to transparency and this trip reflects one way in which we are listening to feedback, providing an opportunity to show a group of influencers how Shein works through a visit to our innovation centre and enabling them to share their own insights with their followers," a Shein spokesperson said.
"Their social media videos and commentary are authentic, and we respect and stand by each influencer's perspective and voice on their experience."
In an interview, Freeman, who has sold under the Shein X program since 2019, characterized the backlash as harassment.
Since posting about the trip, she estimates that she has received up to 75 notifications of hateful messages every five minutes.
"These people don't even know me and they're telling me to kill myself or jump off a bridge, 'You don't have morals,' or, 'You're stupid, you're an idiot,'" she said. "You're the same people who say you care about humanity?"
Several people from Shein have checked in on her and the other influencers since the online retaliation began, and Freeman told them that they need to be more vocal.
Freeman said she has flagged concerns to the brand in the past. "It's always, 'It's not what you think,'" she said. "I really, I just don't know what to do. Honestly, I think about it all the time, because I get a lot of backlash for working with them."
On Monday, Carbonari went live on Instagram, saying that she should have looked into brand more.
"Now, in retrospect, … it's been overwhelming," she said on Instagram. "This whole experience has caused me to re-evaluate myself, my brand, and to fight even harder for sustainability options for plus-size people and just be so much more particular with who I work with, do the research that I should have done from the beginning."
"I can take accountability for myself and my actions," she said, "but I can't take the fall for Shein."
"It's so hard," Freeman said. "It's kind of like someone saying, 'Mom is a serial killer.' And it's like, 'Not Mom! Not the one who makes me the cookies and gives me the hugs!' It's such a hard thing to believe. And not saying that the things that people are saying are not true. They could very well be true."