According to social media reports, employees of the Chinese fashion brand Shein are shouting for help via messages they hide in clothing labels. However, there is no evidence for this.
This fact check was performed on the basis of the information available on the date of publication. Read more about how we work here.
A Knackreader informs us that he saw a remarkable photo collage on his timeline. The photo collage was posted online by a Mexican on June 5 and is about Chinese fashion brand Shein (archived here). In that collage, the Mexican denounces the precarious working conditions. The Spanish text is automatically translated by Facebook as follows: ‘It is so important that we know who makes what we buy and what causes we support and who pays the price for our ultra-cheap clothing. At the end of the day, somehow someone always pays the price for what’s cheap.’ The post has been shared 158,000 times and viewed 55.5 million times. In this way it also reached Flemish Facebook users.
The message is about the working conditions at the Chinese fashion brand Shein. The photos show Shein employees in combination with clothing labels with eye-catching texts such as ‘help me’, ‘I have a toothache’ and ‘need help’.
Shein is a Chinese company with the most visited fashion website in the world. The company is very active on the Chinese video app TikTok and focuses mainly on teens and twenty-somethings. Thanks to an algorithm, the app can estimate what their style is. Add to that the fact that the clothing is dirt cheap and that about a thousand new items of clothing come online every day. Shein recently opened a pop-up store in Antwerp.
In the fashion world, some have been asking questions about the working conditions at Shein for some time. Fashion expert Victoria Bellandini (University of Lincoln) told the BBC: ‘You can’t get clothes so cheap that are made under good working conditions. Until we really know where our clothes come from, we can’t solve these problems.’ The company claims transparency about its supply chain, but the fashion news platform Fashion United, among others, seriously doubts that transparency.
The social media post shows, among other things, a photo of seamstresses next to bags with ‘Shein’ on them (right, red frame). We also find that photo in an article on VRT NWS entitled ‘“The slave in our wardrobe”: Clothing app Shein accused of exploitation’.
The article discusses a report by the Swiss NGO PublicEye that examined working conditions at Shein. PublicEye researchers visited 17 Shein suppliers near the Chinese city of Guangzhou. Employees would have to work 75 hours a week for meager wages. The British public broadcaster BBC and Knack Weekend also reported on this in November 2021.
The current viral Facebook post features a striking collage of five clothing labels with cries for help.
When we upload it to Google Images, we find several Spanish-language articles that indeed claim that the labels are cries for help from Shein employees. However, that information is incorrect.
Snopes’ American fact-checkers examined the labels. They all have different origins and only two labels were linked to Shein. However, those two labels are not about hidden cries for help from employees.
1) Genuine label from Shein
On a first label we see the text ‘need your help’ highlighted in fluorescent on a care label. On Shein’s official TikTok page, the company does not deny that it is one of their labels, but states that the label, written in poor English, only asks customers to “help keep the fabric soft by using a milder detergent” . We do read that.
We see the same clunky text with washing instructions on other labels, such as in this TikTok video or in photos on Facebook showing the Shein logo.
2) Old picture
On a second label with ‘made in China’ we read ‘I have a toothache’. That photo has been circulating on compilation pages with “funny labels” like this one since at least 2016. We find no evidence that this is a real label, let alone that it is linked to Shein.
3) Handwritten message from the Philippines
The third image shows no label, but a piece of cardboard with the text ‘help me, please’. An American woman in Brighton, Michigan found the cardboard among children’s clothing she ordered online from the Philippines. On the back of the scribble was a name and a phone number. We know this from this report broadcast by an American local news channel in 2015. The clothing manufacturer involved, Handcraft Manufacturing, opened an investigation, the result of which is unknown.
4) Stock photo from Bangladesh
In the fourth photo we see ‘help’ written in big red letters. It concerns a stock photo in the image database of Alamy, of which the watermark is visible on the photo. ‘Help’ was probably written on it by the photographer. The labels say ‘made in Bangladesh’ in Portuguese.
5) Name of a product
On a fifth label we read ‘help me’ under the brand name Romwe. This label is real, but does not show a cry for help. This photo has been circulating since 2018 and Romwe reacted to it via his official Facebook page. It was about bookmarks called ‘help me bookmark’. Romwe later changed the item’s name to avoid further confusion. Romwe is a subsidiary of Shein.
Conclusion
The photos of alarming clothing labels in a message about the Chinese fashion brand Shein are of different origin. Only in two cases was a link with Shein found. Once it is a bad translation of a washing instruction and another label shows the name of a product. We judge that these are cries for help from Shein employees false†
Sources
In the article you will find links to all the resources used.
All sources were last consulted on June 16, 2022.
