Sarah Jane Black / 05 May 2025 / Categories: People, Creative

Emanuele Jane Morelli an artist on a mission

An empire built on waste

Morelli writes “SHEIN didn’t build a fashion business, it built a monument of excess, a global empire rising from landfills stitched with synthetic thread and unpaid labour”

To accompany this image created and posted 5 days ago on Emanuele Jane Morelli’s Instagram feed @jane_morelli image credit.

The image is so striking and powerful it has already been shared by many fashion commentators including Retail Boss.

Created using AI, graphic artist Emanuele Morelli takes a powerful swing at every fast fashion brand like SHEIN in this

satirical picture of a billboard suspended above a landfill site. I think the artist is seriously calling out an industry built on over production, mass production, synthetic materials, and an exploited labour force.

The image raises important questions about the true cost of affordability and convenience and shocks us hopefully enough to make us stop.

Interestingly I recently read SHEIN having established themselves as a high unethical fast fashion polluter are expanding their platform like Amazon and ASOS to sell other less conspicuously offending brands. I presume in some way to mitigate all the negative press about the retailer despite record profits.

In 2024 it was reported Sheins net sales rose producing 48 billion dollars up from 1.8 billion dollars in 2018.

Clearly more people could not care less than could, why this image was so important and why I chose to share it and magnify the artist’s voice here in our community.

I read a short comment someone from Columbia had written on the post, I wanted to say something profound myself but the words didn’t come so eloquently for me so I will write what he said

“Thank you for creating such a powerful image, it really struck a cord with me. The way you portrayed the mountain of waste almost invisible beneath the modelled top was incredibly impactful. It’s more than just an image it’s a message, a mirror, a wake up call.”

If you are shopping on Labour Day, when the world takes a break, on a holiday created from roots in the labour movement of the 19th century and came about after a series of disputes and strikes to make conditions better.

I am sure there will be no rest or improved conditions and pay for stitchers in factories supplying Shein present day.

So I urge everyone to look at the image and then ask am I part of the problem. They are not going to stop making the rubbish, it’s us who have to stop buying it.

Thank you Emanuele for this beautiful piece of art.