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The French government has said it will suspend the fast-fashion shopping website Shein amid controversy over its sale of childlike sex dolls.
The announcement came as Shein opened its first brick-and-mortar store in the world in Paris amid a heavy police presence.
“On the instructions of the prime minister, the government is initiating the procedure to suspend Shein for the time necessary for the platform to demonstrate to the public authorities that all of its content is finally in compliance with our laws and regulations,” the office of the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said. “An initial review will be conducted by ministers within the next 48 hours.”
A Shein spokesperson told Reuters the company was seeking urgent consultations with authorities over the suspension.
Separately, the fast-fashion retailer said it was suspending products from third-party sellers in France. A source close to the matter told Agence France-Presse this announcement was unrelated to the government action against the online platform.
The discovery of sex dolls resembling children on Shein’s website triggered a political outcry in France.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened investigations against Shein, as well as the rival online retailers AliExpress, Temu and Wish, over the sale of the sex dolls.
Shein, which was founded in China in 2012 but is now based in Singapore, has pledged to cooperate with French authorities and announced it was banning all sex dolls on its platform.
Hours before the doors of the new Paris store opened on Wednesday, shoppers began queueing outside the department store BHV, opposite the city hall, galvanised by the prospect of cheap clothes, usually made thousands of miles away. They were undeterred by protesters, politicians and riot police.
“I have €200 a month to spend on clothes. With that I can buy 50 T-shirts from Shein or I can buy three T-shirts made in France,” a shopper told French journalists.
Her comments summed up the gulf between shoppers out to bag a bargain and those fiercely opposed to BHV’s collaboration with Shein in the world capital of haute couture.
Fréderic Merlin, the owner of BHV, had said he wanted to create “a buzz” around the launch.
Moments before the dash to the Shein shop on the sixth floor of the department store, he told those gathered he was proud to be at “the beginning of a new world adventure” linking the world of e-commerce and real shopping.
Earlier, he admitted the sex doll scandal had caused him briefly to have second thoughts.
“I thought about ending our relationship [with Shein], but it was the strong decision and reaction of the Shein president who encouraged me to continue,” Merlin told French television, referring to the withdrawal of the items and ban on sex dolls. “Products here [in the store] are labelled Shein and are made by Shein in Shein factories,” rather than third parties, Merlin told French television.
Outside BHV, those jostling to get early-bird tickets to enter the shop first, seemed mostly unperturbed by the row or the riot police.
Melanie, 40, had taken a day off work at a medical goods supplier to go shopping for cheap clothes.
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“We are told we should buy ‘made in France’, but where is the proof that things in the other shops that are twice as expensive are produced in France? I know exactly what I want: a pair of shorts that cost €4 that would cost me €25 elsewhere,” she said.
Béatrice, 62, a retired elderly care assistant, could barely contain her excitement.
“I’ve ordered hundreds of euros of stuff from Shein online, including this …” she said, modelling her cream winter coat.
“It has everything … Whatever they [protesters] do or say, I’m here to shop and I’m going in and buying whatever I find I like.”
Others in the queue behind listened and nodded.
Round the corner from the queue, Emmanuel Grégoire, a former deputy Paris mayor and now a Socialist MP, found himself in the middle of a media scrum with a faulty microphone.
He said the issue was bigger than shopping and an existential threat to French society. “What is at stake this morning with this opening goes far beyond a commercial controversy; it is a choice of society and a battle for the future we want to pass on to our children,” he said.
“On the one hand, the empire of disposability and dehumanisation; on the other, a world based on respect, knowhow, and responsibility. We choose the latter.”
Seven department stores elsewhere in France, managed by the same company as BHV but trading as Galeries Lafayette, have been ordered to change their name if they go ahead with plans to open Shein outlets in stores in Dijon, Reims, Le Mans, Grenoble, Angers, Orléans and Limoges.
Dorine Bregman, the deputy mayor of the Paris centre arrondissement that includes BHV, said she objected to the company on human exploitation, ecological and economic grounds.
“This model of ultra-fast fashion, based on overproduction, aggressive marketing and exploitation, is profoundly against our values and has no place in the heart of Paris and least of all in a place as historic as BHV,” she said.
AFP and Reuters contributed to this report
