Day 90: I made it!

9/22/2024

Day 90: I made it!

Delighted and a little overwhelmed to announced I finally made it to day 90 of the 90 days of Shein challenge, where I wore a small selection of clothes from the Chinese retail giant for three months to find out if fast fashion really is disposable.

I’m planning to wash and photograph every item and examine in detail how it fared over the next few days, but here are a few insights.

90 days on I can say that the only one of the items I bought that is beyond repair is the shoes, which now have multiple holes in both their soles. I only have to step onto a damp pavement for them to start letting in water. Still, I managed to wear them a total of 80 times over the last three and a bit months so although I fear they are now headed for landfill they served their purpose for most of the summer.

On the other hand, I managed to wear the nightdress every single night (I was lucky the weather was warm and dry enough most of the time to keep it clean), and it doesn’t look significantly different from when I bought it.

I managed more than 70 wears of the backpack, despite having to repair several holes, and the lace bra.

The trench coat, leggings, wide-leg cargo pants and white long-sleeve tee were all worn more than 30 times, and came out of the challenge still in wearable condition.

As for how I did with the challenge, it was supposed to be 90 straight days. Unfortunately I ended up taking a short break for a work trip (I didn’t include work or formal wear in the capsule) that got extended for a few weeks.

I also had a couple of weeks when I didn’t manage to wear head to toe Shein between accidentally leaving clothes with family members after a trip to England and being reunited with them. There were a couple of days on holiday when I spent part of the day in my “own clothes” as the Shein capsule was in the laundry, and a few times at home when I grabbed one of my own jumpers.

Apart from that, I’ve stuck pretty well to the challenge, and definitely well enough to test how durable the clothes are.

I can confidently say that with the exception of the shoes and the bag nothing fell apart.

However, the longer I wore the clothes, the less I liked most of them. If I’d had the option to wear something else I certainly would, especially as the seasons changed and new autumn fashions appeared. Sadly, it’s not hard to see how with an inexhaustible supply of cheap new clothes, many of the ones we buy from fast fashion retailers end up in landfill.

Everything I wore on day 90 of the 90 days of Shein challenge: