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Business|Shein Chose Paris for Its First Boutique. Paris Isn’t Pleased.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/business/shein-retail-store-paris-backlash.html
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As the Chinese online fast-fashion retailer prepares to open a physical space in a venerable department store, France pushes to stem the company’s presence in the country.
Oct. 10, 2025, 2:06 p.m. ET
The sixth floor of Paris’s iconic BHV Marais department store, with its sweeping rooftop views toward the Eiffel Tower, is one of the most coveted retail spots in the city. It is also now the focus of an uproar over the Chinese e-commerce giant Shein, which is setting up its first physical boutique atop the fashion capital of the world.
The news that Shein’s ultracheap knockoffs, from pink miniskirts to black berets, would be moving beyond online retail and into brick-and-mortar stores has unified politicians and fashionistas in anger and given steam to an effort by French lawmakers to halt its continued online expansion as well. The Paris boutique is set to open on Nov. 1, and Shein is planning to open stores in five other French cities, a move that it promotes as an “homage” to France and its role in fashion.
But the company’s charm offensive has worn thin. On Friday, employees at BHV Marais quit their cash registers for a few hours and gathered outside to protest the opening of a 1,000-square-meter space for Shein. Many denounced what they said was the incursion into France of a low-cost Chinese competitor that used cheap labor and violated environmental and human rights standards in making its clothes.
“Shein goes against our beliefs,” said one employee, who, like others in the crowd, declined to give her name, citing privacy concerns. “We have always been a beautiful store with beautiful brands, and we try to promote corporate social responsibility.”
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Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, did not hold back. “Paris denounces the establishment of Shein, a symbol of fast fashion, at BHV Marais,” she declared in a LinkedIn post this week. The historic department store, known as the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, was built as a bustling market hall in 1856.
