STORY: As bridal gown designer Valentina Schuchner puts the finishing touches on her wedding dress collection for Buenos Aires Fashion Week, she says the mood is not celebratory.
"I think the environment is a bit strange, even emotionally speaking. Everyone is a bit sadder, more stressed. I'm obviously generalizing, but you hear that it's harder to make ends meet, and many brands are closing."
Argentina's textile and apparel sector is facing one of its worst downturns in decades as ultra-cheap imports - many from Chinese fast-fashion platforms - flood the market.
President Javier Milei has made opening the market one of his goals, aimed at deregulating trade, driving competition and lowering prices.
Last year, his government cut clothing and footwear tariffs from 35% to 20%.
Rules on cross-border e-commerce orders have also been relaxed, raising the duty-free threshold for courier shipments in 2024 to $400.
Milei's policies have helped rein in inflation, stabilize prices and boost economic activity for some industries, like agriculture.
But when combined with cheaper imports, domestic industries like textiles are feeling the crunch.
At the family-run Amesud textile plant just outside of Buenos Aires, chief executive David Kim said the factory is running at just 30% capacity.
"The government wants us to compete. We have no problem in competing, but we need them not to burden us with taxes, labor costs, and union charges that don't exist in other countries."
A spokesman for Milei's trade ministry declined to comment.
Argentina's main clothing industry trade group said door-to-door imports shipped directly from other countries to consumers' homes almost quadrupled last year.
China has been a particular beneficiary.
Industry group Fundacion Pro Tejer said China's share of textile and clothing imports surged from roughly 55% in 2022 to 70% in 2025, driven heavily by Shein and Temu.
Meanwhile, Argentina's textile sector has cut 16% of its workforce since 2023, shrinking from about 121,000 employees to 102,000 by the end of last year, according to industry data published in February.
Kim said his company invested $10 million in imported machinery over the past decade to meet the demand of clients including Nike, Puma and local kids' clothing brand Mimo & Co.
But now, much of the equipment is sitting idle.
"We've lived through many crises in this country, but this is the worst crisis in our history. Not only the worst in terms of money we lost, but the longest in time, and the one where we had to let go of the most people."
