Brandy Melville has been popular among teenage girls and young women since the early 2000s when the first store opened in the United States. A documentary released about Brandy Melville titled “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion,” recently released on Max shows the corrupt practices behind Brandy Melville.
Brandy Melville was founded by Silvio Marsan and his son Stephan Marsan in Italy in the early 1980s. The first American store was opened in Los Angeles and quickly became popular among young girls due to the store’s aesthetic.
The documentary goes through how Brandy came to be so popular, including their social media, marketing tactics and multiple controversies that the brand has been mired in. The documentary includes insider pictures and videos of people talking about Brandy, which keeps the documentary engaging and exposes a system of exploitation within Brandy Melville and the global fast fashion industry.
Even though the documentary is interesting and goes into detail about the background of Brandy Melville, it doesn’t seem to be hugely impactful. When I took a recent trip to Georgetown, it wasn’t hard to notice that the store was packed as always with teenage girls, therefore not creating the impact that it may have been intended for.
Brandy Melville has been involved in multiple controversies throughout the years, including their “One size fits all” clothes. Until recently, all of Brandy Melville’s clothes were one size, which was meant to fit everyone. However, according to the documentary Brandy’s clothes were geared toward people who could fit into sizes zero to four in order to keep the brand exclusive.
The clothes from Brandy Melville say that they are made in Italy, which gives the illusion that they are of great quality, however the documentary reveals that while they are made in an Italian town named Prato, the company uses unethical labor practices and the clothes are made cheaply. Because the clothes are made by mostly immigrants who are being underpaid and overworked, Brandy Melville lowers the prices of their clothes to make them more affordable for the general public.
The documentary interviews former employees who talked about their experiences working at Brandy Melville including their discriminatory practices. According to the documentary, white employees were more likely to be working on the floor helping and checking out customers, while women of color were more likely to be placed in the back, working in stock rooms. There were also pictures of text messages from the leadership at Brandy Melville containing racist and antisemitic jokes.
Although the content in the documentary is informative and made me think about the clothes I’m wearing, the formatting of it is odd. It goes back and forth between talking about Brandy Melville and then talking about fast fashion as a whole. Even though Brandy Melville and fast fashion are connected, it was confusing to understand what the documentary is saying.
Overall the Brandy Melville documentary reveals the harmful background behind the company and brings new perspective into the culture there. If the documentary had gotten more attention, it may have brought more change and discussion.
