One of HBO’s newest documentaries takes a deep dive into teen clothing sensation Brandy Melville, following its dubious business practices all the way to the root of the wasteful fast fashion industry. “Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion” debuted on the HBO Max streaming platform in April of this year, building off of Kate Taylor’s 2021 Insider exposé on the brand.
“From day one, I knew this place was not your conventional clothing company,” said a former Brandy Melville model quoted in the documentary. The captivating hold that Brandy Melville has on its target demographic is impressive even within its own field. The brand originated in Italy, founded by Silvio Marsan in the early 1980s, but only became the global phenomenon it is today after its first U.S. location opened in 2009 in Westwood, Los Angeles.
Advertising to teen girls is nothing new, but the way it is done here is worth noting: since their debut in the United States, Brandy Melville has never run a TV advertisement, never bought a billboard, never even held a storewide sale. Their one and only source of advertising has always come from social media, mainly Instagram. As Taylor said in the documentary, “it’s impossible to talk about Brandy Melville without talking about social media.”
Instagram has served as Brandy Melville’s carrier pigeon for the last decade, influencing the basic Californian girl aesthetic that the brand’s patrons emulate. This word-of-mouth advertising method has earned booming profits for the company, which has now completely embodied the concept of the “lifestyle brand.” But beneath the sparkling waters of the Malibu t-shirts and beachy aesthetic, trouble has been brewing all along.
One of the most striking details a consumer might first notice when shopping at a Brandy Melville store is the clothing itself. There is only one size, and that size is tiny. The store and its aesthetic is generally aimed at not just young girls, but skinny young girls. This same standard is expected from their clientele, with rumors of customers being shot with dirty looks or even being turned away for not being the right kind of “Brandy girl”. These rumors swarmed when a viral video started making its rounds on the Internet, showing the door to the Paris, France location being so narrow that only the smallest of girls managed to squeeze their way through it.
Moreover, the employees of a typical Brandy Melville outlet seem to exemplify this desired image: young, white, mostly blonde girls who are small enough to fit into the clothes they sell. The company has repeatedly come under fire for these discriminatory hiring practices over the last decade. Several former employees were interviewed for the documentary, and each of these employees had the same things to say: the white employees were chosen to work with customers in the front of the store (even modeling for the company Instagram), while the employees of color were resigned to backstock positions hidden away from the public. Stefan Marsan was even quoted as saying that employees of color were turning the stores “ghetto” and threatening to close stores that hired minorities in one of two lawsuits against the company. Regardless of background, nearly all of the employees interviewed reported suffering from eating disorders and long bouts of body dysmorphia during their time working for Brandy Melville, due to the arduous standards placed upon them.
The costs of the fast fashion industry as a whole were also given their share of screen time, as Brandy Melville is itself a fast fashion brand. Despite the tags on their clothes claiming to be “Made in Italy,” the documentary points out that the clothes still come from sweatshop labor (that just so happens to be located in Italy). The sheer volume of discarded clothing from this industry ends up on the shores of countries like Ghana, where the locals call them “dead white man’s clothes.” Countries who refuse to take the trashed clothing are reportedly subject to punishment, such as extra taxes and removal of grant money and duty-free status.
The leadership of the company has also come under intense scrutiny of late. The Marsans were always known to have strong libertarian views, having handed out copies of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” at early store locations, as well as having named their sub-brand, John Galt, after a character from the book. What was not known until recently, however, were the private group chats shared amongst the higher-ups of the company. The chats, called “Brandy Melville Gags,” were filled to the brim with jokes about Hitler, 9/11, and even sexually explicit images featuring the company’s models. Racism was a heavy theme within these messages, which somewhat explains their overt favoritism towards white models and employees in stores.
Each location reportedly had a private group chat with Stefan Marsan, in which they would submit daily photos of the store’s employees, called “style photos.” These were supposedly used to gather inspiration for new clothes or prospective models, but company employees interviewed in the documentary stated that Marsan would request certain girls be fired if their look wasn’t good enough for the company. A Berlin store employee was quoted as saying that the company finally admitted that she was let go because a company executive, who visited the store a day that she was working, did not like her body type and said she was not the “typical Brandy girl.” A compilation folder of hundreds of “style photos” was later found in the possession of Stefan Marsan himself, saved up as his favorites over the years. Models and store employees remember specifically being asked for photos of their chests, feet, and other specific body parts.
A so-called “Brandy apartment” in New York owned by Stefan Marsan was set aside for specially handpicked models to stay in for short periods and other company executives. Girls have reported entering the apartment only to be startled by the unexpected sight of other girls sleeping on the couch unannounced, or even other men sleeping in the next room. Kate Taylor even references a documented incident of date rape occuring in said apartment, with the employee stating that she did not wish to report the event so that her work visa wasn’t revoked and she could stay in the country.
Despite the major controversy swirling around the brand, sales are still as good as ever for Brandy. As Kate Taylor said, “Brandy Melville is still able to tap into the worst impulses of being a teenage girl.” These teenage girls are not likely to stop their “Brandy hauls” any time soon, especially considering the growing financial freedoms allotted to young people with each passing year.
The fast fashion industry and the toxic culture around its biggest brands has been a problem for decades, and will most likely continue to be one for quite some time. To an unassuming outsider, Brandy Melville appears to be a microcosm of the lives of teenage girls, mirroring their highs, lows, and inherent impulsivity. In reality, it represents a growing and concerning trend in American society’s consumption habits: disposable, cheaply made products with a lifespan only as long as the latest trends. Children and teens are being born into this world of daily new wardrobes, and it is starting to affect the youngest generation in the most frightening ways. Or, in this case, a store made for teenage girls and run by other teenage girls who glare and snicker behind their Apple monitors, happy to be in their exclusive club of skinny popular girls.
In reality, this club is proving detrimental to the self-esteem of young girls. For every one employee that started hating their body and harming themselves in order to become skinnier, there are hundreds of young Brandy Melville shoppers out there who suffered the same or worse. The prisoners and the wardens are both being enslaved by the same people, and neither of them know it. The only way to break the cycle is by bringing mindfulness back to the fashion industry à la “slow fashion,” and raising awareness of these predatory practices. HBO’s documentary clearly shows that there is a long way to go to rectify this situation. The future of fair labor, and the mental health of young girls, is on the table.
