Fast Vintage: Last Week’s SHEIN Specials Already On Display At Op Shops

EFFIE BATEMAN | Lifestyle | CONTACT

A frustrated local woman has yet again had her monthly op shop ventures ruined by the infiltration of SHEIN clothing, which she’s now started calling the ‘AI of op shops.’

Ducking into her favourite Red Cross shop last Sunday morning, Annie Lu, 32, was hoping to find some cool, unknown brand named clothing or secondhand Cue, when she found himself sifting through several items of poor quality SHEIN clothing – all of which were barely cheaper than buying brand new.

“There are two things that can be certain with op shops now, and that’s finding at least one book from the Twilight series, or fucking SHEIN”, says Annie, with a defeated sigh, “it’s even started creeping into the nicer independent op shops.”

Due to how cheap SHEIN products are, the prevalence of the brand can likely be chalked up to consumers doing large clothing hauls.

It’s also virtually impossible to avoid being advertised these products, as most of the sponsored posts for Google searches are items from SHEIN, which is at the forefront of trending fashion.

“Look, I support clothes being donated to op shops instead of going into the landfill, but I really don’t want to buy secondhand SHEIN clothing. It was bad enough when Supre started popping up a few years ago.”

Annie adds that she doesn’t blame people for buying from SHEIN, considering a lot of ‘acceptable brands’ are also clothes made from sweat shops.

“I don’t know though, it just feels..wrong. Like it’s ruining the spirit of op shops.”

“Kind of like how Marvel cinematic universe ruined modern cinemas.”

More to come.