The Story of Boohoo & PrettyLittleThing

An Empire With No Consequences

Manchester 2006: two textile-trade veterans, Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, launch Boohoo, a website selling £20 (~$27) dresses. Nothing quite remarkable on the surface. Until Kamani's own sons replicated the model next door in 2012 and called it PrettyLittleThing.

Same concept but using a sharper blade: spot the trend on Instagram, ship it to doorsteps within days, and price it low enough that nobody thinks twice about a bad buy.

Within five years, PrettyLittleThing had become the fastest-growing online retailer on the planet. Boohoo swallowed it entirely by 2020. The math is brutal and simple: a £4 billion (~$5.4 billion) empire, built on the idea that fashion should feel as disposable and consequence-free as a scroll, and the company should never pay the price.

£3.50 an Hour

Until, the receipt came. In July 2020, The Sunday Times found a Leicester factory supplying Boohoo paying workers £3.50 an hour (~$4.60) — less than half the UK minimum wage — during a pandemic, in unsafe conditions.

An hourly wage the Western mind can barely comprehend. How is that even possible? Who accepts to work for such pay? Who is Boohoo actually using? And how could they disguise their production as being made in the UK, with such practices…

Because Boohoo hadn't just manufactured there quietly — it had made "Made in Britain" a selling point. In its own words: "We firmly believe that 'Made in Britain' should be a label of pride for those wearing our clothes and a badge of honor for those who make them."

An independent review later confirmed the allegations were substantially true, and pointed to weak oversight of Boohoo's own supply chain. Over £1 billion (~$1.3 billion) was wiped off the company's value within days.

Sound familiar? Swap the name and it's the exact same Shein story: someone always pays for your £8 (~$11) top. It's just never the brand.

The Wrong Road to Sustainability

Then in 2022, to follow the sustainable trend, Boohoo launched a collection labeled "sustainable" with Kourtney Kardashian as its figurehead. Needless to say, it wasn't.

The campaign ran for the span of a year, presented as Kourtney Kardashian's journey through sustainability, where she interviewed industry experts about fashion's environmental impact. It positioned Boohoo as a brand engaged in self-reflection on sustainability and change in the fashion industry, rather than one that had actually shifted how it sourced or produced clothes. The goal was content, not accountability.

Boohoo claimed the line was built on recycled fibers, with most pieces reportedly containing some share of recycled polyester or cotton, alongside a couple of vintage jackets sourced through a third-party reseller. But what Boohoo never disclosed was the actual percentage of recycled material in each garment, or where the fibers actually came from. "Recycled" became a label, not a data point anchored in reality.

The funniest part was that the campaign landed while the £3.50-an-hour headlines were still trending. And by sheer coincidence of the calendar, right as the UK's Competition and Markets Authority was investigating Boohoo, alongside Asos and Asda, over misleading "eco-friendly" claims. The power of greenwashing.

Welcome Debenhams

Then, in 2025, the real trick ticked in: Boohoo Group renamed itself Debenhams Group, after acquiring the dying, historic British giant in 2021.

On paper, it was a strategic rebrand: the company pointed to Debenhams' turnaround as the blueprint, trading a name attached to five years of horrific production conditions and greenwashing headlines for one carrying a century of high-street trust.

In reality, it was a name swap timed to outrun a reputation: Boohoo, BoohooMan, PrettyLittleThing, and Karen Millen were all quietly folded under "Youth Brands" on Debenhams.com — a label vague enough that nobody browsing the website is linking them back to their scandals.

Even Frasers Group, Boohoo's own largest shareholder, holding close to 29% of the company, voted against the rebrand, and has since pushed to force leadership change altogether. The dishonesty is flagrant: same factories, same founders, same £3.50 an hour, just a nicer name on the invoice — and a legacy department store's reputation laundering it.

Towards the Future

And the innovation keeps coming, but never where it's needed. The group is rolling out AI-powered checkout, faster delivery windows, smarter personalization: every tool gets pointed at buying more, buying faster, buying without friction. Not one of those upgrades touches the supply chain. Technology has clearly gotten smarter, but transparency hasn't moved an inch.

A new name isn't a real change.

Until Boohoo starts with accountability, it stays on the avoid list. It's time to stop falling for a rebrand every time the last name gets too toxic to wear.