If you’ve spent too much time on YouTube and Instagram lifestyle accounts in the 2010s, you’re probably familiar with American brands Forever 21 and especially Brandy Melville. While in Europe we know well H&M, Zara (two brands in the process of premiumization like Mango), Boohoo (increasingly low cost) and we begin to demonize SHEIN and Temu more and more, HBO is coming out into the open an alarming documentary on Brandy Melville, a brand that is still very popular in the United States today.
Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion, the shocking documentary about Brandy Melville
The keys to his success yesterday are the same as today: an aesthetic of eternal, carefree adolescence in the sun embodied in increasingly rikiki clothes, with a “one size fits all” that corresponds only to the thinnest builds. A way to exclude any clientele above size SM by pretending to be inclusive.
So much so that being thin enough to dress like Brandy Melville is almost an instrument of physical and social distinction, from the 2010s to today. This aestheticization of thinness is illustrated with virality on TikTok, Tumblr and Instagram, as presented in a new documentary, Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion.
Brandy Melville: Fast fashion, physical discrimination in hiring, and a climate of juvenile crime
Presented in early April 2024 during the South by Southwes festival (“ SXSW » for close friends) and on HBO, the work shows the worst production practices and incitement to excessive consumption that characterize fast fashion (thanks in particular to clandestine workshops in Prato, Italy). But also accusations of discrimination and sexual violence by company executives. All in a climate of barely disguised child crime.
Eva Orner, the director of this uplifting documentary on Brandy Melville, interviewed journalist Kate Taylor to also present how the brand’s economic and administrative model proves opaque. The company has a CEO who is more than discreet in the media: the Italian Stephan Marsan who has never given an interview regarding the brand. Each store belongs to a different front company, linked to an account in Switzerland, in order to be as untraceable as possible.
Racist jokes, sexual assault, and Brandy Melville’s booming business
Like the racist corporate policies denounced by Abercrombie & Fitch, Brandy Melville had a physical style of employees to recruit: as young, thin and white as possible, possibly Asian, and as few as possible, an anonymous source summarizes in the documentary. The CEO even had a button installed under the register of the New York flagship store to be pressed if a customer was “young and cute” enough to work for the brand. In addition to Hitler-celebratory jokes and other negrophobic jokes, the documentary also mentions alleged sexual assaults within the company.
Except that, unlike Abercrombie & Fitch which publicly apologized and changed its hiring policy, as well as wanting to transform its image to make it more inclusive, Brandy Melville persists and signs its silence. As noted by Caretaker, the brand, already repeatedly criticized for its discriminatory practices, continues to thrive through exclusion. According to the report, its annual sales surpassed $212 million in 2023, up from $169.6 million in 2019. Wall Street Journal. Business is business.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
