On Friday, the company most synonymous with fast, disposable, environmentally ruinous clothing bought the company most synonymous with the opposite. Shein — the Chinese-founded giant that ships an estimated million new items a day and has been investigated on three continents for labour practices — now owns Everlane, the San Francisco label that built its entire identity on photographing its factories, listing the cost of every button, and asking customers to pay a little more to feel a little better.
The price was $100 million. Everlane was valued at $600 million in 2021. That's not a discount. That's a clearance rack.
For a decade, Everlane sold an idea as much as a t-shirt: that you could shop your way out of an industry's sins. Founder Michael Preysman built the brand around "radical transparency," a phrase that briefly became as common in millennial closets as it was in TED Talk titles. The clothes were fine. The story was the product.
But stories don't service debt. By the time the deal closed last week, Everlane was carrying roughly $90 million in loans it couldn't refinance, and Shein's offer didn't just buy the company — it wiped that debt clean. Fast Company's headline put it bluntly: "the era of millennial optimism is officially over." On TikTok, the response was less polite.
So what actually happened here? And why should anyone who isn't currently wearing a $58 cashmere crewneck care?
