Shein Gets Called Out For Blatantly Copying Fitness Blogger’s Skirt Design
Heavy is the waist that wears the thoughtfully-designed skirt. Cassey Ho, the name behind the popular fitness channel Blogilates, had spent over a year coming up with a well-fitting workout skirt that mirrored a ballerina’s tutu but provided enough coverage.
Fast forward to January 2023, and one of her greatest fears was confirmed. A near-identical variation of her Pirouette Skort, a combination of a skirt and shorts, had been listed on Shein, the online fast-fashion giant often criticized for plagiarizing independent designers’ pieces without consent.
Well. It finally happened. @SHEIN_Official STOLE MY DESIGN. 😡 Worth more than Zara and H&M combined at $100 BILLION but they still take advantage of small brands?
— ⤠Cassey Ho ⤠(@blogilates) January 30, 2023
Why are we letting a business that runs on robbery be rewarded like this?? https://t.co/fnTbdVusVj #boycottshein pic.twitter.com/e0X85MEok2
Oh no Shein didn’t… again.
Ho said she found out about the appropriation from her husband, who was looking at the Blogilates Instagram account’s direct messages when he came across a text writing: “Shein stole your design!”
“In that moment my heart paused. I didn’t know how to feel,” Ho wrote on her blog.
The fitness influencer said she had originally designed the Pirouette Skort back in 2021, poring over every detail until she got the design right. “It took months to find a [mesh] fabric that would flow with the lightness I needed, but would still give that ballerina’s tutu feel,” she said.
The Pirouette Skort was released after more than 10 months of development. Ho recounted that she had no idea if the skirt would appeal to fitness lovers, since she “had never seen a workout skort like this before, but selfishly needed it for myself.” Incredibly, the skirt sold out in just days, and her YouTube video describing the garment has since amassed 26 million views.
In the months since the skirt flew off the shelves, Ho returned to the drawing board to perfect it even more, such as lengthening the back for extra coverage and taking away the front seam to prevent “camel toe.”
“Even though it seems simple, any change to a design will delay its production as we are VERY thorough in our prototyping process!” Ho elaborated.
The latest iteration of the Pirouette Skort launched on January 5, 2023, for US$60. It would take only a couple of weeks before Shein rolled out a version of its own, pricing it at US$13.
Both skirts sport a tiered silhouette with adjustable laces at the waistband. Hidden in the shorts segments are pockets to stash your phone into during workouts.
Ho expressed disbelief that the wildly popular website didn’t just release a similar skirt but also “the entire styling” of her photos.
One photo matched Blogilates’ image of a model, accessorized in gold rings, showing off the skort’s pocket with a white smartphone. Both women were also styled in white sports bras.
Ho, a Chinese-Vietnamese American, claimed that Shein also cast an Asian model “to create subliminal association.”
She pointed out that, to drive costs down, Shein appeared to cut corners for its version of the Pirouette Skort with single and double-needle stitches that were not “activewear-appropriate” nor “sturdy enough for the movement and performance of a workout skort.”
Balletcore—a trend characterized by tulle skirts, ballet flats, bodysuits, and bunned-up hair—is currently on the rise in the fashion world. Shein, which is powered by real-time analytics to grasp which styles will sell like hotcakes, would have observed this.
Shein was ranked the “most popular” fashion brand in 2022. It is reportedly valued at US$100 billion—“that’s more than Zara and H&M combined,” Ho noted.
Ho shared her disappointment that although Gen-Z consumers pride themselves as eco-loving and ethically conscious, they are also “the group that is fueling [Shein’s] rise.”
“I was thinking, is this some twisted rite of fashion designer passage?” the blogger questioned. “Should I be flattered?”
“It’s kinda hard to be when you were just robbed in broad daylight.”
Ho reiterated how Shein was able to launch a similar exercise skirt so easily because it didn’t have to take risks or overstep integral parts of production, like the painstaking process of sample testing.
The offending listing is no longer available on the Shein website, as of the time of publication.
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[via NextShark and Blogilates, images via Blogilates]
