Wendy Ortiz and Sister Evelyn Face Backlash Over SHEIN Collab After Past Criticism

Wendy Ortiz and her sister Evelyn are catching heat online, and this time it has nothing to do with streaming drama. The two recently landed a brand collaboration with SHEIN, the fast-fashion giant, and fans quickly dug up older clips of the sisters criticizing that very same company. In the resurfaced videos, they spoke out against SHEIN over child labor concerns, with one of them saying plainly that she does not shop there anymore. Now that they are officially working with the brand, a chunk of their audience is crying hypocrisy and calling for the deal to be dropped.

The criticism is not coming out of nowhere, because the labor concerns were real. SHEIN itself disclosed in a 2024 sustainability report that its audits had found two instances of child labor in its supply chain during 2023, cases the company said it resolved by suspending the suppliers involved and tightening its policies. So when the sisters previously said they would not support the brand over exactly those issues, they were pointing at a documented problem, not an imaginary one. That history is what makes the sudden collaboration feel jarring to fans who remembered their earlier stance.

That said, there is a fairer, more complicated side to this. People and creators do change their positions over time, and a brand addressing a problem is arguably better than a brand ignoring it. SHEIN has publicly said it strengthened its rules after those findings, and someone could reasonably argue that engaging with a company under scrutiny is different from pretending the issues never existed. Whether that is principle or just a convenient way to justify a paycheck is exactly the debate playing out in the comments right now.

Still, the optics are tricky for a reason. When an influencer builds trust partly by taking a moral stand, reversing that stand for a paycheck invites the obvious question about whether the values were ever the point. It is not unique to the Ortiz sisters, either. Fast fashion is a massive and controversial industry, one the United Nations has estimated accounts for around 10 percent of global carbon emissions, and creators promoting it will keep facing this exact tension between conscience and commerce.

It is also worth acknowledging that influencers get held to a standard few of us would survive, with every old video preserved and ready to be replayed the moment it becomes inconvenient. Consistency is harder when your entire past is searchable. That does not erase the fair criticism here, but it is a reminder that the pile-on can outrun the actual offense. Where this goes is anyone's guess. Brand deals rarely collapse just because a comment section is upset, and SHEIN is not exactly hurting for influencers willing to work with it. The more interesting question is how Wendy and Evelyn Ortiz choose to address it, if they do at all. A thoughtful explanation about changing their minds, or about pushing the brand to do better, would land very differently than silence or a defensive clapback.