Inside Missguided, ‘girlboss’ culture masks the reality of rapid fashion. Watching his documentary show was alot of fun , as an Indian man doing well for himself , Nitin Passi working well with some women and becoming a billionaire. Missguided was established in 2009 by Nitin Passi who remains the owner of the company. Since its launch, the online retailer has experienced rapid growth in the UK and has expanded into USA, Australia, France and Germany.
Nitin founded Missguided in 2009 with a loan of £50K. Since then, he has turned it into a fashion brand that has global reach and millions of customers. HIS STORES ARE IN
Channel 4’s new doc paints the brand as an empowering workplace where women run the show, but completely neglects to explore the experiences of those actually making its clothestSophie Benson
“It might be owned by a man, but it’s definitely us who run the show,” says Olivia Walker, Missguided employee and narrator of the new Channel 4 documentary, Inside Missguided: Made in Manchester. Missguided is the fast fashion brand infamous for its £1 bikini, celebrity collaborations, and risqué advertisements – which have been subject to ASA bans. The series, which began airing last night, takes us behind the scenes to meet its majority female workforce who call the shots.
“Me and 229 badass bitches work our arses off 24/7”, Walker tells us, against shots of the teams shooting on location, fitting models, running campaigns, and making important phone calls. What’s conveniently missed, however, is that CEO Nitin Passi, as well as the Chief Product Officer, Chief Growth Officer, Chief Operating Officer, the IT Director, the Head of Sourcing, and many other top-level executives are all men, helping explain the brand’s 46 per cent pay gap in favour of men reported in 2019.
Nevertheless, female empowerment is the theme of the show. Striking in its similarity to the BBC’s fly-on-the-wall fast fashion documentary, Breaking Fashion, viewers are primed to watch through a lens of admiration for the Missguided “boss babes” as they negotiate influencer collabs, churn out celebrity-inspired looks at lightning speed, jetset around the world for shoots, and ‘make shit happen’ in order to bring the brand back from its ‘savage’ £26 million loss in 2018.
Glaringly absent in all four of the series’ episodes is any real consideration for the majority female garment workers that fast fashion brands owe their success to. This context is sorely lacking, especially considering the often desperate situations of such workers have been in the headlines recently: as the coronavirus caused sales to slump, major retailers quickly cancelled orders and refused to pay for stock that had already been manufactured (and shipped, in some cases), leaving garment workers with no income.