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Just a couple of moments before the fashion giant unveiled a temporary store in the city during the summer, graffiti appeared on the outside wall accusing, “Shein kills” and “exploitation, forced labour, slavery, pollution.”

Yet, the fierce backlash surrounding its temporary outlets across France in recent years—including in Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille—has not deterred the China-based fast fashion brand from selecting the nation for its inaugural long-term retail spaces.

This week, the brand revealed a plan to open shops in Galeries Lafayette locations in five cities and additionally in the BHV store in Paris.

Outside the mayor’s office, they are creating the new Shein megastore, which – after destroying many local labels – seeks to inundate the French market on a larger scale with throwaway items,” stated Yann Rivoallan, head of the fashion retailers’ body Fédération Française du Prêt à Porter Féminin.

Sophie Abriat, notes: “This rapid-production approach is the extreme of wastefulness. It is built with ephemerality, through intense promotion.”

But, she adds, France’s distaste for the business model runs much deeper: “It contrasts with the national custom of keeping objects, of savoir-faire – the brand carries a negative perception that is moral as well.”

Still despite this vocal criticism, with a Change.org petition to ban Shein in France now having topped 270,000 signatures, France has not been immune to the company’s steady growth over the past five years.

Its model, based on shipping orders of low-cost apparel straight from Chinese factories to homes, reportedly brought in $1bn net profit the previous year, making it not only a figurehead of “ultrafast fashion”, but among its most profitable firms. That is despite criticism over its environmental impact and working practices, such as claims of coerced labor that the company has denied and instances of underage workers that led to supplier contracts being terminated.

Its success rests with the astonishing speed and volume of its production styles, with thousands of new items listed on the platform every day. “It represents an entirely new way of shopping – the scale is exponentially larger,” says Abriat. Between late 2022 and late 2023, the company introduced 1.5m products to the American market – roughly thirty-seven times the amount than a competing retailer and 65 times more than another major brand, as reported by Reuters.

Around the time of the temporary store launch, the national legislature passed a law designed to restrict ultra-fast fashion, specifically platforms like the brand and its ultra-low cost shopping rival another online retailer. The bill included a series of steps, from eco-taxes to a prohibition of marketing, limits to influencer collaborations, required reporting of production practices, and redirection of collected funds towards French sustainable producers.

This legislation was praised by many as a step in the right direction, but sparked debate for differentiating so-called “traditional” quick fashion (established brands and similar companies), and “hyper-fast clothing”. In fact, the first category faces less stringent constraints. According to some, this separation seems to make high-street labels appear more virtuous in contrast; according to other views, it is seen as a method to undercutting rivals from China.

However The nation boasts a long tradition of rapid apparel production, rooted in the Sentier, Paris’s historic garment district in the 2nd and 3rd arrondissements. From the 1970s onward, the quartier, alongside similar commercial zones (including in the port city), developed a system founded on rapid turnaround, limited runs, and short supply circuits, frequently restocked on demand instead of fixed schedules.

This fuelled the rise of cult – and affordable homegrown high street labels like Naf Naf, Kookaï, and Jennyfer, which prospered through the 1980s and 1990s, both in France and abroad, before outsourcing production and eventually disappearing or repositioning themselves. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the local model was surpassed by international labels like H&M and Zara, who delocalised production and scaled up procurement and inventory – a trend depicted in the French film saga Would I Lie to You?, which is located in the district.

On a cultural level, Abriat draws a parallel between the brand’s acceptance to that of the early days of H&M when it arrived on Paris’s rue de Rivoli in 1998: “It was considered vulgar. The fashion elite regarded it as lacking in style or sophistication.” Now, she says, “these brands have become mainstream, fully accepted” while Shein has taken on the outcast status.

Attracting young shoppers, the retailer dramatically changed its image with a designer partnership in 2004, which sold out in just a few hours. From then on, the French style scene began to accept high-street pieces as a component of the modern French closet.

Other fast-fashion megabrands aimed for legitimacy by working tightly with renowned industry names. Emmanuelle Alt, former editor-in-chief of a leading fashion publication, worked with Zara as a style advisor, while another influential editor, co-founder of a style periodical and present style director at M le Magazine du Monde, has worked repeatedly with the company, around creative guidance and outfit curation. A fashion figure a well-known model walked in an H&M runway show. and French model Aymeline Valade has appeared in a brand catalog and publicly admitted to a fashion title that she shops there, for basics at least.

Sophie Fontanel, comments: “In the capital, it has become common to mix affordable brands, vintage, and high-end pieces, each selected with skill. Locals don’t go to such stores for bold items or imitations, but for everyday essentials: classic clothing items.” Few admit to regularly using the label in daily life, though. “You don’t say it,” says Fontanel. “Or one might remark: ‘You won’t believe it, but this is from Zara.’”

One major distinction with Shein is its digital footprint, which represents a cultural shift for more mature shoppers. A bilingual content creator Camille Charrière, explains: “The French prefer physical retail, with their friends and family, on the weekend. Their style remains consistent to go out on the weekend or at night, they shop more deliberately.”

Some of the attraction of hyper-fast clothing lies in its size inclusivity: for many consumers, it remains the sole company that accommodates a variety of figures. Larger-size offerings is largely unavailable in the country, particularly among mid- and high-end labels.

Ultra-fast fashion has brought about new ways of consuming: online shopping, avoiding try-ons, and buying in quantity. Garments are frequently used just one time, discarded or listed on resale sites – a drastic shift in how wardrobes are assembled and maintained.

The influencer stresses that there can be a “considered” way of wearing budget apparel: “One shouldn’t torture oneself for purchasing affordable clothing. I have items from retailers that are several years old that I still wear. To me the most important thing is to make an effort to wear my purchases … to ensure they are worn repeatedly.” {While that doesn