WWhat is the true cost of fast fashion? This is the question at the heart of Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion, the shocking HBO documentary released this week on Max that investigates the many controversies surrounding the popular fast fashion brand, Brandy Melville. Since the 2010s, the clothing company has developed and nurtured a cult following of teenage girls who scooped up its beach and feminine offerings and marveled at its relatively inexpensive prices and celebrity fans. The brand's immense popularity, however, has masked a number of troubling issues with Brandy Melville and its CEO, Stephan Marsan, from exclusionary sizing practices (their clothes come in only one size, approximately one American XS/S) to reports of racial discrimination and sexual harassment from staff working in their stores.
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In the documentary, director Eva Orner argues that Brandy Melville, a brand associated with a very specific type of carefully presented youth, has built its success, like many other fast fashion brands, on multiple levels of exploitation of teenage girls whom she courts and employs Chinese immigrant staff to sew her clothes in sweatshops in Prato, Italy. The documentary features interviews with former store employees and two former brand executives, as well as insights from journalists like Kate Taylor, whose 2021 investigation for Insider in Brandy Melville uncovered not only widespread discrimination within the company, but also blatant racism and sexual assault.
Here's what you need to know about the many controversies covered in Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion.
How Brandy Melville became so popular
Brandy Melville was founded in Italy in the 1980s by Silvio Marsan and his son Stephan, now CEO of the brand. Although some might assume that its name refers to a person, the store's nickname is actually based on a fictional story created by the company about an American woman, Brandy, who falls in love in Italy with an Englishman, Melville. The brand achieved immense popularity when it opened its first retail outlet in the United States in 2009, choosing a perfect location to attract a younger clientele: the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, close to the campus of 'UCLA, where their California girls' clothing became a hit. with American teenagers. In the decade since Brandy Melville began selling in the United States, the chain has opened 94 stores worldwide, including 36 stores in the United States.
The brand's popularity among teenage girls has been reinforced by its presence on social networks. As a pioneer of the influencer marketing model, the company used content created by teenage girls posting about clothing on Tumblr, Instagram and TikTok to grow its consumer base. Brandy Melville has often reposted photos of customers wearing her clothes his own Instagram account, which currently has over 3 million followers. This, in turn, encouraged young girls to post themselves wearing the clothes and tag the brand in the hope that their photo could be shared, creating free publicity for the company. Influencers and celebrities like Kaia Gerber were often given free clothing to wear and post, inspire girls to release their own Brandy Melville clothing collections. But when it came to who they featured on their social accounts, Brandy Melville apparently had tunnel vision; they often selected girls who fit a certain aesthetic, young, thin and white, often blonde and usually with long hair.
Why Brandy Melville has a “one size fits all” approach
Brandy Melville is known for her “one size fits all” approach to sizing. While the retailer once offered more conventional sizes, the majority of its clothing has long only been offered in a relatively small size, about a US extra small or small. According to a former Brandy Melville executive interviewed anonymously in the documentary, this tactic was explicitly part of the company's business model, as a way to keep the brand “exclusive” and associated with a specific (and very fine) physical aesthetic.
Brandy Melville's one-size-fits-all policy has had a negative impact on both customers and employees. In the documentary, social media posts show customers lamenting about not fitting into Brandy Melville's clothes, and plotting how to lose weight in order to fit into the store's skimpy outfits. Former employees who appeared in the documentary said they struggled with eating disorders and had a healthy body image while working in stores, where they felt pressured to fit into the brand's clothing. Employees were required to send daily full-body photos of their work attire to Marsan, who allegedly fired employees whose appearance he did not like.
Marsan is not interviewed in the documentary and Brandy Melville has made no comment.
Brandy Melville fostered a toxic work environment
In the documentary, former employees of Brandy Melville alleged that the company used discriminatory hiring and labor practices. The employees said the company often recruited young, thin, white women, who sometimes even shopped as customers, to work in their stores. In the New York flagship store, where Marsan had an office overlooking the sales floor, he installed a light in the register that he flashed when he wanted to recruit a buyer.
Once hired, employees were required to send full-body photos to Marsan, who kept them in a folder on his phone; some claimed they were also asked to send photos of their chests and feet.
The company has also faced serious accusations of racism over the years, resulting in two lawsuits. One was filed by a former executive, who claims his Brandy Melville store in Toronto was closed by the company because its customer base was primarily people of color. Throughout the company, racism was ingrained in store logistics; according to some former employees, white employees were responsible for working on the sales floor, while non-white employees were responsible for working behind the register or in the warehouse.
Former employees also claimed that special treatment was given to their favorite employees, who often fit the “Brandy” aesthetic, and were invited to go on lavish production and development trips to Italy and China. Some also gained access to car services and an apartment in New York. In the documentary, Taylor said that while she was researching her 2021 schedule Insider Expos, she discovered that a 21-year-old employee who was staying at the apartment had reported being sexually assaulted by a middle-aged Italian man who, unexpectedly, was also staying at the apartment.
What to Know About Controversial Brandy Melville CEO Stephan Marsan
Little is known about Marsan, who maintains a virtually nonexistent online profile. According to a former Brandy Melville store owner interviewed in the documentary and in Taylor's 2021 Insider Expos, Marsan and other top executives at the company were part of a group chat called “Brandy Melville gags” where racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes and memes, as well as sexually explicit photos, were shared. The store owner also claimed Marsan was an avid Trump supporter who mocked the young women he employed who were Bernie Sanders supporters. According to the store owner, Marsan's political views were fueled by his hatred of taxes and his self-identification as a libertarian ideology which he believed in so deeply that he named a sub-brand of Brandy Melville, John Galt , after the hero of Ayn. by Rand Atlas shrugged his shouldersa book that he sometimes used in store decorations and gave to employees.
Marsan's business practices are obscure; While the Brandy Melville brand is owned by a Swiss company, each Brandy Melville store is owned by a different shell company, making it difficult to understand its overall finances. Like other fast fashion brands, Brandy Melville has also been criticized for allegedly stealing designs from other clothing brands and independent designers. In the documentary, former staff members shared that sometimes executives would ask what clothing they were wearing so they could replicate it for Brandy Melville.
How Brandy Melville shines a light on the problems created by fast fashion
The documentary uses Brandy Melville as an example of the larger problem of fast fashion and its negative impact on the environment and human rights. He points to the brand's rapid production cycle, driven by rapidly changing trends, as well as its relatively low price, as factors likely to encourage clothing waste, which has become a major problem since fast fashion took over. began to dominate the clothing industry. The emphasis on cheap, fashionable clothing produced quickly often means sacrificing quality, leading consumers to quickly dispose of their clothing. At the same time, marketing trends such as influencer giveaways or shopping, key tenets of Brandy Melville's success, also encourage rapid consumption and disposal.
The documentary demonstrates that the exploitation of Brandy Melville's store employees parallels the exploitation of those who produce their clothes; the fast and cheap production of their trendy clothing is made possible by the labor of Chinese immigrants in their factory in Prato, Italy, a city known for its textile production for many fashion brands and cases of clandestine exploitation in its numerous factories. Likewise, the documentary also highlights the human cost of fast fashion by focusing on landfills in Ghana, where textile waste from the west pollutes bodies of water, a phenomenon which has rapidly increased since the Fast fashion has become the dominant clothing model.
