What is the true cost of fast fashion? That’s the question at the heart of “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion,” a shocking HBO documentary that premiered on Max this week. The documentary explores the many controversies surrounding popular fast-fashion brand Brandy Melville. Since the 2010s, the clothing company has gained and maintained a cult following of teenage girls who shop for its beachy, feminine goods, who have marveled at its relatively affordable price points and celebrity following. But the brand’s immense popularity has masked a number of troubling issues for Brandy Melville and its CEO, Stephen Marsan, from its exclusive sizing (their clothing is only available in one size, roughly the US XS/S size) to reports of racism and sexual harassment by staff working in its 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 crafted girlhood, like many other fast-fashion brands, has built its success on multiple levels of exploitation, from the teenage girls it courts and hires, to the Chinese immigrant staff who sew its clothes in sweatshops in Prato, Italy. The documentary features interviews with the brand’s former store employees and two former executives, as well as insights from journalists such as Kate Taylor, who investigated Brandy Melville for Insider in 2021. Taylor found not only rampant discrimination at the company, but also blatant racism and sexual assault.
Here’s what you need to know about the many controversies surrounding Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion.
Why Brandy Melville became popular
HBO
Brandy Melville was founded in Italy in the 80s by Silvio Marsan and his son Stephane, who is now the CEO of the brand. While some may assume the store is named after a person, it is actually based on a fictional story created by the company, in which an American girl, Brandy, falls in love with an Englishman, Melville, in Italy. The brand opened its first store in the US in 2009 and has since gained immense popularity. It chose the Westwood district of Los Angeles, near the UCLA campus, as the perfect location to reach a younger customer, where its sexy California girl clothes were a hit among American teenagers. In the 15 years since Brandy Melville began selling in the US, the chain has opened 94 stores worldwide, including 36 in the US.
The brand’s popularity among teenage girls grew through its social media presence. As an early adopter of the influencer marketing model, the brand used content created by teenage girls posting about the brand’s clothes on Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok to grow its customer base. Brandy Melville frequently reposts photos of customers wearing its clothes on its Instagram account, which currently has over 3 million followers. This in turn encouraged young girls to post photos of themselves wearing the clothes and tag the brand in the hopes that the photos would be shared, providing free publicity for the company. Influencers and celebrities like Kaia Gerber were often sent free clothes to wear and post, inspiring girls to post their own Brandy Melville clothes. However, when it came to who to feature on its social accounts, Brandy Melville seemed narrow-minded, often choosing girls who fit a certain aesthetic: young, thin, fair-skinned, blonde, and often with long hair.
Why Brandy Melville takes a “one size fits all” approach
HBO
Brandy Melville is notorious for its “one size fits all” approach to sizing: While the retailer once offered more common sizes, the majority of its clothing has long been available in only one relatively small size: U.S. extra small or small. According to a former Brandy Melville executive interviewed anonymously in the documentary, this strategy was explicitly part of the company’s business model as a way to keep the brand “exclusive” and associated with a particular (and very thin) physical aesthetic.
Brandy Melville’s “one size fits all” sizing policy had a negative impact on both customers and employees. The documentary shows social media posts of customers lamenting that Brandy Melville’s clothes didn’t fit them, and figuring out ways to lose weight to fit into the store’s tiny clothes. Former employees featured in the documentary said they felt pressured to fit into the brand’s clothes while working at the store, and struggled with eating disorders and having a healthy body image. Employees were required to send Marsan a full-body photo in work clothes every day, and Marsan allegedly fired staff who didn’t like the way they looked.
Marsan is not interviewed for the documentary, and Brandy Melville has not commented.
Brandy Melville fostered a toxic work environment
In the documentary, former Brandy Melville employees allege that the company engaged in discriminatory practices in hiring and workplace practices. Employees say the company frequently hired young, thin, white women, who sometimes came to shop as customers. At the New York flagship store, where Marsan had an office overlooking the sales floor, he installed lights at the cash registers that flashed when a shopper wanted to hire him.
Employees said that once they were hired, they were asked to send full-body photos of themselves in their clothes to Mr. Marsan, who saved them in a folder on his phone. Some also said they were asked to send photos of their breasts and legs.
The company has faced serious accusations of racism over the years, resulting in two lawsuits. One was filed by a former executive who claimed the company closed its Brandy Melville store in Toronto because its customers were primarily people of color. Throughout the company, racism was ingrained in store logistics, with some former employees saying white staff were tasked with working on the sales floor while non-white employees were assigned to work behind the cash registers or in the warehouse.
Former employees also alleged that favored staffers were given special treatment, often because they matched “Brandy’s” aesthetic, and were invited on lavish production and development trips to Italy and China. Some were even given car service and access to a New York apartment. In the documentary, Taylor said that while researching the 2021 Insider expose, she discovered that a 21-year-old staffer staying at her apartment reported being sexually assaulted by a middle-aged Italian man who was also unexpectedly staying at the apartment.
What to know about Brandy Melville’s controversial CEO, Stephen Marsan
Little is known about Marsan. Marsan has barely maintained a profile online. According to a former Brandy Melville store owner interviewed in the documentary and Taylor’s 2021 insider expose, Marsan and other senior executives at the company participated in a group chat called the “Brandy Melville Gag,” where racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic jokes and memes, as well as sexually explicit photos, were shared. The store owner also claimed that Marsan was a Trump supporter and made fun of the young women he employed who supported Bernie Sanders. According to the store owner, Marsan’s political views were fueled by his hatred of taxes and his self-identification as a libertarian. He believed in this philosophy so deeply that he named a sub-brand of Brandy Melville John Galt, after the protagonist in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and used the book in the store’s decorations and as gifts to employees.
Marsan’s business practices are opaque. The Brandy Melville trademark is owned by a Swiss company, but each Brandy Melville store is owned by a separate shell company, making it difficult to understand its overall financial situation. Like other fast fashion brands, Brandy Melville has been accused of stealing designs from other clothing brands and independent designers. In the documentary, former employees say that executives would sometimes ask what Brandy Melville was wearing so they could recreate the outfit for her.
How Brandy Melville highlights the problems fast fashion creates
HBO
The documentary uses Brandy Melville as an example of the larger issue of fast fashion’s negative impact on the environment and human rights. It points out that the brand’s rapid production cycles and relatively low prices, driven by fast-changing trends, are driving clothing waste, which has become a major issue since fast fashion took over the clothing industry. The emphasis on cheap, quickly produced, trend-following clothing means sacrificing quality, causing consumers to quickly throw clothes away. Meanwhile, marketing trends such as influencer gifting and shopping hauls, key principles of Brandy Melville’s success, also drive rapid consumption and waste.
The documentary argues that the exploitation of Brandy Melville’s store workers is similar to that of the people who produce their clothes. Their trendy clothes are made cheaply and quickly by Chinese immigrants working in factories in Prato, Italy, a city known for its textile production for many fashion brands, with many factories plagued by instances of exploitative labor. Similarly, the documentary highlights the human cost of fast fashion, focusing on landfills in Ghana, where textile waste from the West pollutes water bodies and has increased exponentially since fast fashion became the mainstream clothing model.
