Why We Won’t Work With or Promote Temu or Shein on WSS

I get asked fairly regularly why you’ll never see any Temu or Shein posts on here, especially when so many other lifestyle sites, and influencers, happily promote both. Both companies have reached out numerous times to collaborate with them and I always say no. It’s a deliberate decision, and I think it’s worth explaining properly rather than just quietly avoiding the topic.

France has taken this further than almost anyone
France deserves its own mention here, because the French government hasn’t just raised concerns, it’s actually acted on them. Shein has now been fined more than €210 million in France across several separate cases: €40 million for deceptive discount practices (investigators found 57% of “discounted” items had no real reduction at all), and a further €22.5 million for breaching consumer withdrawal rights and failing to disclose product traceability and microplastic content under French environmental law. Temu, meanwhile, was fined €200 million by the European Commission for failing to keep unsafe and illegal products off its platform.
In late 2025, French authorities also opened a criminal investigation into Shein, alongside Temu, AliExpress and Wish, over allegations that minors could access pornographic content through their marketplaces, and Shein specifically was investigated after child-like sex dolls were found listed for sale on its site. Shein pulled the listings and suspended its entire adult products category, but the French Finance Minister publicly threatened a full ban on the company off the back of it.
France has since gone further again, passing a dedicated “ultra-fast fashion” law that puts escalating per-item fines on platforms like Shein and Temu and bans them, and any influencers, from advertising at all. It’s a genuinely significant response from a national government, and it tells you a lot about how seriously these concerns are being taken outside of social media commentary.

The forced labour concerns are serious, not fringe
This isn’t a niche conspiracy theory. A bipartisan US Congressional investigation found that Temu has essentially no system in place to keep forced labour, including Uyghur forced labour, out of its supply chain, and raised serious concerns about Shein’s sourcing too. Both companies have been formally investigated over alleged breaches of forced labour laws, and in December 2025 the Texas Attorney General opened a fresh probe into Shein specifically over these claims. I’m not in a position to independently verify every allegation made against either company, but when the concerns are coming from congressional investigations and state attorneys-general rather than random social media posts, that’s not something I’m comfortable looking past for a discount code.

The toxicity findings are hard to ignore
Seoul city authorities have run repeated product safety tests on items from both platforms, and the results are genuinely alarming. Children’s shoes from Shein were found to contain phthalates at 428 times the legal limit. Sandals from Temu contained lead at 11 times the permitted level. Formaldehyde, dioxane and other carcinogens have shown up across multiple rounds of testing, in products meant to sit directly against skin, including children’s items. These aren’t isolated one-off findings; they’re a pattern, tested and confirmed by an actual government body.

The fast fashion model itself is the problem
Even setting aside the specific allegations against these two companies, the business model both operate on is built on an unsustainable cycle: thousands of new styles listed every single day, designed to be worn a handful of times and discarded. That pace has a genuine environmental cost, from textile waste to the resources used to produce garments that are barely worn before they’re binned. It also relies on a pricing structure that’s very hard to reconcile with fair pay anywhere along the supply chain.

Why this matters to me as someone who talks about style
I love fashion. I love a good bargain as much as anyone. But part of talking about style responsibly, to me, means being honest about where clothes actually come from and what it costs to make something that cheap. I’d rather point you toward fewer, better pieces, and toward brands willing to be transparent about how and where they’re made, than build content around platforms with this many documented red flags.
This isn’t a judgement on anyone who shops there. I understand the appeal of the price point, genuinely. But I can’t in good conscience feature, promote, or accept partnerships with either company, and I wanted you to know why, rather than just noticing the absence.