everlane and shein lol

the veil of sustainability, if you will

Okay, well, I guess I’m gonna need to start buying my underwear elsewhere: on Sunday night, Puck News revealed that Everlane has been acquired by Shein.¹

Everlane, the formerly high-flying Millennial direct-to-consumer basics brand, is being sold to Shein by its majority owner, L Catterton … The deal, which values the company at $100 million, was approved by the board on Saturday …. L Catterton and Everlane’s current C.E.O., Alfred Chang, had been searching for an investor to clear about $90 million in debt—a $25 million loan from Gordon Brothers, and a $65 million asset-based revolving credit line. (Puck)

(I think we’re not discussing the $100 million valuation² enough … like, with respect to the American dollar, that is pocket change. A measly 5% of the Eras Tour ticket sales. In this economy? With inflation the way it is? I don’t wanna embarrass anyone, but these are not serious numbers.)

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Now, I can’t and won’t lie to you: this did tickle my funny bone. I remember when Everlane was a little-known San Francisco-based brand quietly favored by a Suits-era Meghan Markle, who wore their eventually-somewhat-ubiquitous logoless tote on one of her first public outings with Harry (and why must my brain be burdened with this information at the click of a synapse like I did not have to look this up and that is probably at least one of the reasons why I can no longer perform long division by hand).

Everlane’s Soho store. So sterile, so clean. One can imagine an operating room just an elevator ride away.

Talk of this brand, which for a long time I believed was Canadian because that is how unassumingly it positioned itself, really takes me back. Mostly to one of my most annoying acquaintances back in New York, who used to brag about how she was shopping at Everlane way before the first brick-and-mortar store opened in Soho in 2017, thank you very much, like she was personally responsible for single-handedly saving the rainforest all because she bought leather flats from Everlane and not, like, Steve Madden. God, it is so hard to be in theoretical agreement with self-righteous people. Makes you understand why the messenger is always getting shot.

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Let’s lay the personal cards on the proverbial table, then.

I’ll admit that circa 2016-2021 I did buy quite a few pieces from Everlane: I was literally living in New York and going to law school; when the company created a target demographic they had a picture of my anxious little face on their marketing decks. Still, I’m proud to say I never took a stab at their weird little flats. I have this irrational hatred against campaigns to make ugly shoes appealing to consumers. Apologies for having eyes, I guess. This is incidentally also why from an aesthetic perspective, Rothys have never failed to viscerally upset me.³

So yes, I was a fan. I hadn’t yet figured out the impossibility of ethical consumption, and I loved the idea that through equipping my closet with various unassuming shades of black and beige and grey I could also do my part in like, rebuilding the Great Barrier Reef.