2024-02-12 07:23:26
He is the young environmentalist face of the Les Républicains (LR) party. Almost 31 years old, Antoine Vermorel-Marques has the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as his bedside book, but also has an account on TikTok, the favorite social network of preteens and customers from Shein, this Chinese giant of « fast fashion” (“disposable fashion”) online. The Loire MP describes his dive into Shein “hauls”, online videos where influencers show off their purchases in paid scenes.
Always enthusiastic, they open entire boxes of clothes to show off one of the 470,000 models available on the site. With an average price estimated at 7 euros per item and thousands of new products offered every day, with the help of artificial intelligence, to target buyers’ desires, Shein would push for overconsumption. “We are on single-use, ultra-fast fashion. It’s “I buy my t-shirt, I wear it once and I throw it in the trash””denounces Antoine Vermorel-Marques.
Tuesday, February 13, the elected official must table a bill with the evocative title: “Making fast fashion out of fashion with a bonus-malus system”. This text must be debated at the beginning of March during a transpartisan week in the National Assembly. According to MP LR, the subject speaks as well “on the right than on the left, because it is about reconciling reindustrialization and ecology”. Born and elected in Roanne (Loire), this farmer’s son knows the rich textile history of his town, with the relocations of the 1980s and this recent blowback with “eco-responsible fashion”.
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However, this trend of more sustainable consumption is threatened, according to him, by a player like Shein, which represents a fifth of the fast fashion market in the world and is already ahead of pioneering brands like Zara and H&M. “If we import products with social and environmental standards comparable to ours, I have no major problem. But this is not the case with Shein, for example”, explains Antoine Vermorel-Marques. The elected official cites a study carried out by Greenpeace. According to the analysis of 42 garments purchased in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, 15% of them contravene European legislation on chemicals, according to the association for the defense of environment.
“Textile passport”
Without uttering the word protectionism, Mr. Vermorel-Marques wishes to set up a “textile passport to support our businesses” and penalize foreign competition “too often disrespectful of labor rights, respect for our environment and the health of its customers”. His bill introduces a notion of threshold (one thousand new products per day) to target the actors whose environmental impact is the most significant in order to subject them to specific obligations. The introduction of a fast fashion penalty should make it possible to finance a bonus for more responsible brands, such as those in the French textile industry.
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