Ultra-fast fashion giant Shein is planning to acquire former sustainable fashion wunderkind Everlane, in a deal valuing the latter brand at $100 million, Puck reported. If ever there was a metaphor for the state of sustainable fashion in 2026, this is it.
Launched in 2011, Everlane came up in the age of “ethical capitalism” and millennial optimism, when the general consensus was that the most sustainable thing people could do was eat a vegan diet, boycott air travel, and put their dollars behind brands that bucked the status quo. With its promises of “radical transparency” on pricing and supply chains, Everlane was well-positioned to capitalize on this, and its elevated basics quickly gained a devoted following — not to mention a $600 million valuation at its 2020 peak.
So, when unconfirmed reports about the deal began circulating online on Sunday, shockwaves rippled through the sustainable fashion sector. On LinkedIn, industry leaders decried “the end of an era”, drawing parallels with the equally shocking news last month that sustainable sneaker brand Allbirds — another darling of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) boom — is rebranding as an AI company. “What’s the point in all of this?” wrote one user on LinkedIn, one of many second guessing their careers following the Everlane news. “Will this industry ever be truly capable of changing?” wrote another.
The backlash from Everlane’s followers was similarly swift and conclusive. “Everlane just nuked their entire customer base,” said one Instagram user, commenting on the brand’s most recent post. “The hypocrisy is astounding,” added another.
LVMH-backed investment engine L Catterton acquired a majority stake in Everlane in August 2020, reportedly paying $85 million as the lead in Everlane’s Series F funding round. Neither Everlane nor L Catterton responded to a request for comment on the reports of the Shein acquisition; Shein declined to comment. The lack of on-the-record confirmation likely means the deal has not yet been signed, explains competition lawyer Alex Stratakis, a partner at London law firm Pinsent Masons. As such, official confirmation and closing could still be several months away, pending regulatory approval. How complicated that process becomes is hard to predict, he adds.
“The two companies offer quite differentiated products — one is very sustainable, the other one not at all sustainable, in my opinion — and they exist in the very competitive space of fashion retail, so I don’t see why any competition authority would be concerned about loss of competition,” Stratakis continues. Where the deal might run into complications is on the national security side, if the US government — whose “erratic” approach could try to block a Chinese acquisition on the basis of protecting US consumer data — takes aim at Shein. But this is “beyond speculation” at this stage, Stratakis says.
In the meantime, critics are musing on the apparent misfit between Everlane and Shein, which has been hauled over the coals for alleged labor infractions and its spiraling environmental impact, with US and UK regulators even stepping in to halt its Western IPO ambitions, citing ethical concerns. But the deal makes more sense than initially appears.
Everlane launched with a message of radical transparency, sharing how much it cost to make its clothes and the mark-ups it applied. It later expanded this approach to include listing its factories and signaling to consumers that its clothes were the product of ethical and transparency-led decisions, such as clean chemistry or responsible forestry. But the brand’s sustainability chops took a hit in 2020, when an investigation in The New York Times unraveled its promise off the back of accusations about union-busting and a tumultuous internal culture. (At the time, co-founder Michael Preysman issued a statement saying the company had “urgent work to do to rewrite Everlane’s code of ethics”.) Sales faltered, and the situation worsened when consumers started demanding more than basic designs.
