I had come to see Kelly film. She hopped into the living room to dance around—a warm-up—then led me upstairs to the second-floor landing where she does her shoots. There was a Christmas tree, a cat tower and, in the center of the landing, an iPad mounted on a tripod and fitted with a ring light. On the floor lay a pile of Romwe shirts, skirts and dresses.
Kelly’s mother, Nichole Lacy, scooped up the clothes and went to the bathroom to dry clean them. “Hello Alexa, play Christmas music,” Kelly said. She joined her mother in the bathroom and emerged for the next half hour wearing one new outfit after another – heart-shaped vest, star-print skirt – and quietly modeled in front of the iPad camera, making kissing faces, kicking one leg up, finger a hem here or a tie there. At one point, the family’s sphynx, Gwen, sauntered into the frame, and they hugged; later the other cat, Agatha, appeared.
For years, Shein’s public face has taken the form of the likes of Kelly, who form a federation of influencers who film shoots for the company. According to Nick Baklanov, a marketing and research specialist at a company called HypeAuditor, Shein is unusual in the industry because of the sheer number of influencers it sends free clothes to. They in turn share discount codes with their followers and earn a commission on the sales. This strategy, HypeAuditor says, has made it the most talked-about brand of any kind on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
In addition to the free clothes, Romwe Kelly also pays a flat rate for her posts. She wouldn’t say what her fee is, though she said she earns more in a few hours of video work than some of her friends with regular after-school jobs make in a week. In return, the brand gets relatively cheap marketing, in the places where the target group, teenagers and twenty-somethings, prefer to hang out. While Shein has collaborated with major celebrities and influencers (Katy Perry, Lil Nas X, Addison Rae), his sweet spot seems to be those with medium-sized followers.
In the 1990s, before Kelly was born, Zara popularized a model that borrowed design ideas from everything that got attention on the catwalks. Manufacturing clothing near its headquarters in Spain and streamlining the supply chain, it offered these proven styles within weeks at prices that felt shockingly low. Connie Chan, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz who invested in a Shein competitor called Cider, told me that Shein represents a newer phase of fast fashion: What appears on catwalks and in fashion magazines now matters less, and people look to each other for it. what to wear. “She Doesn’t Care” Fashion doesn’t think it’s a cool piece,’ she said. Boohoo, a UK-based company, and US-based Fashion Nova, are part of the same trend.
After Kelly finished filming, Lacy asked me how much I thought all the pieces — 21 pieces, plus a decorative snow globe — on Romwe’s website had cost. They looked better than what I had bought by deliberately clicking on the cheapest items, so I guessed at least $500. Lacy, about my age, smiled. “It was $170,” she said, her eyes widening as if she couldn’t believe it herself.
By the mid-2000s, fast fashion was the dominant paradigm in retail. Having joined the World Trade Organization, China had quickly become a major clothing manufacturing center, with Western companies moving much of their production there. It was around that time, in 2008, that Shein’s CEO’s name first appeared in Chinese business documents, as Xu Yangtian. He was listed as co-owner of a newly registered company, Nanjing Dianwei Information Technology, along with two others, Wang Xiaohu and Li Peng. The file shows that Xu and Wang each own 45 percent of the company and Li the remaining 10 percent.
Wang and Li shared their memories from that time. Wang said he met Xu as a colleague, and in 2008 they decided to start a marketing and cross-border e-commerce company together. Wang took charge of business development and some aspects of finance, he said, while Xu was in charge of a range of more technical matters, including SEO marketing.
