SHEIN is this ogre a clown? This smuggled Jonah lands on the asphalt of Châtelet, by the unexpected hiccup of a Great Trabucaire Collector, pounding out the drumbeat of slander and fashion. In short, at the BHV, fast fashion is turning into religion, and Paris lights a polyester candle. Because on November 5 at exactly 1 p.m., while some in the neighborhood will be lunching on lukewarm quinoa thinking about the end of the world, others will hurry to the BHV to witness an event of historic significance: the opening of the very first physical store in the world of the Chinese brand.
Here, then, is the temple of “made-in-anywhere” settling into the beating heart of the capital, under the respectable vaults of the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville and across from another bazaar that of the queen mayor spends. Paris, city of couture, capital of fashion, cradle of Dior, Chanel, and Saint Laurent, now welcomes its enemy. Thanks to the “Pascal Marrants” and “flying rices” for doing nothing to prevent this brand known as “the hops” from selling a €2.99 sweater that reeks of kerosene.
Its boss, Frédéric Merlin (no relation to Leroy), proudly posted on Instagram: “World premiere.” Nothing less. You’d almost want to applaud. After all, France has always loved revolutions. We had 1789, 1848, 1968… and now, 2025 the year when fast fashion “has money on the street or on Rice, depending…”
SHEIN is that modern miracle: dresses delivered faster than an Uber Eats order, sewn by invisible hands on the other side of the world, in workshops that smell less of perfume than of Uyghur slave labor. But who cares! Polyester is the new silk, the click the new needle, and low-cost the new luxury.
The ultimate irony: this first store, where young French designers dream of a space, a window, a lease to sell their creations, is being privatized by the Middle Kingdom for 18 months. But maybe SHEIN will leave them a little room between two racks thus fulfilling the role of governing institutions that govern nothing.
The BHV, once the bastion of the screwdriver and the “free rustic buffet,” is reinventing itself as a cathedral of “ready-to-throw-away.” Soon, prayers will surely rise there for the salvation of textiles. Because behind the spotlights, one slightly awkward question remains: how much is a €3 dress really worth when you pay for it in dignity?
SHEIN, already a symbol of disposable, mass-produced fashion, has today crossed a vile new threshold: selling, on its website, a sex doll modeled after the body of a little girl. A nightmare object marketed as a “male masturbation toy” childhood turned into merchandise.
SHEIN is no longer just fast fashion. It’s fast degradation. It’s not an economic model anymore; it’s a machine for desensitization. After normalizing overconsumption, now it normalizes the unspeakable: the sexualization of children for €186.94, the price of industrialized shame.
This product is not an “accident” or the work of a “third-party partner.” It exposes the collapse of a system without filters, without ethics, where algorithms decide what can be sold even the unspeakable.
But “hush hush,” the store enters the history of globalized consumption: a clean showcase for a truly filthy world, where some wash their hands while others wallow in thoughts so stained that no moral bath could ever clean them.
FM