It was always about the money, wasn’t it? For a while there, it seemed like the execs opining sustainability is not a trend, it’s the future actually meant it. But when yet another global brand drops its net zero goals or stops talking about DEI, you do wonder. Recent headlines include Stella McCartney adulterating her eco gloss with a sustainable capsule collection for H&M – don’t worry, she’s just “infiltrating from within” – and Lululemon being investigated for Pfas. The letdowns keep coming.

Now the internet is reeling from a report that Shein plans to acquire Everlane, the San Francisco-based sustainable basics brand built on “radical transparency”. Shein is the Chinese ultra-fast fashion giant epitomising murky supply chains and crazy-cheap landfill fashion. They release up to 10,000 styles a day, and have been making headlines of their own over secrecy and alleged links to forced Uyghur labour.

Fashion reporter Lauren Sherman reported the acquisition plans this week, though neither Shein nor Everlane have confirmed.

Everlane appears to be losing money fast. After layoffs in 2020 and 2023, the brand confirmed in April it was closing its San Francisco office.

“Which Black Mirror episode is this?” was a top comment on popular fashion Instagram account Diet Prada’s post about the potential sale, which attracted dismayed comments from leading sustainable fashion advocates. My favourite, via British sustainable fashion consultant Natalie Binns: “The people asking, ‘where am I going to shop now?’ when they have a wardrobe full of Everlane clothing, are part of the problem.”

According to Sherman, Shein sees value in the brand’s supply chain and was the only one willing to stump up the US $100m asked by Everlane’s majority owner, private equity giant L Catterton (which is backed by LVMH, and owned RM Williams before Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest bought it in 2020). Shein can afford it – last year, their sales topped £2bn in the UKand $1.5bn in Australia.

For my money, I bet it’s not just the practical capabilities of the supply chain that interests Shein, it’s the story. They could use a green glow-up.

In 2019, I interviewed Everlane’s founder Michael Preysman for my podcast. We discussed his concept of radical transparency, then described thus: “We reveal the true costs behind all of our products – from materials to labor to transportation – then offer them to you, minus the traditional retail markup.” The direct-to-consumer model kept costs down; the brands’ core value of honesty kept sustainability up.

I asked him about his own outfit. He favoured the tech bro uniform of jeans, grey T-shirt, sneakers. “Generally we have a 60% margin,” he said, much less than his competitors. “[For the jeans] it’s about $27 … so that means $68 is what I paid. There’s nothing that we hide from the customer,” he continued, describing how little most brands disclose about where and how their clothes are made, never mind from what.

He told me about their partnership with the innovative denim factory Saitex in Vietnam, how the water used in their process emerges so clean you can drink it, and how they prioritise worker welfare. Preysman talked about innovation, being a disruptor and how “both people assume we’ll be doing the right thing on sustainability but they’re also holding us accountable”, which he called a “nice balance”.

If the acquisition goes ahead, production in Saitex would be a drop in the ocean of crappy plastic nonsense Shein churns out of myriad unaudited micro-factories in Guangzhou.

The Everlane tragedy follows last month’s Allbirds comedy. Another publicly listed sustainable fashion company driven by Silicon Valley hype, Allbirds has given up making sneakers out of carbon neutral materials in order to flog AI. The surprise pivot came with a name change – NewBird – and a cynical cash grab. The old bird had been leaking money; the new one sent stock surging 600%.

I visited Allbirds HQ the same year I interviewed Preysman. We discussed their B Corp journey, material innovation and how co-founder Joey Zwillinger reckoned “at the end of the day, people don’t buy sustainable products, they buy great product experiences”. I titled the podcast episode ‘The Eco-Awesomeness of Allbirds – Sustainable Shoes for Changemakers’. At the time, I was Australian Vogue’s newly minted sustainability editor, a world first and there was hype around me too. The position opened doors I never could have stepped through on my own. I believed that hype, that big business was changing, that at least some of the execs at these behemoths believed in a more equitable future for all.

But I was also, and remain, deeply embedded in the activist movement for genuine sustainability. This year, we’ve seen many of our pioneering organisations – Remake, Fashion Revolution, Centre for Sustainable Fashion – shrink, restructure or be shelved completely due to a crippling lack of funding, while reports abound of declining consumer interest in the space. The algorithm, we are told, has moved on. The serial entrepreneurs too – Michael Preysman now runs a “magnesium powered hydration” startup. The C-suite is not persuaded by the moral imperative and not enough shoppers are willing to pay for sustainable product.

So how do we navigate this moment?

Accept it: sustainability is not hot right now. OK! This was never meant to be a popularity contest. The movement needs to get back to basics. Circularity won’t save us – we must focus on workers’ rights and the just transition. Have hard conversations about overproduction. Dismantle consumerism as the dominant narrative and define a properly radical approach to system change. You can’t take the politics out of this, but why would you want to?

As the last few months have shown us, when sustainability becomes purely about the business case, it stops meaning anything at all.

• Clare Press is the host of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast