Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

Brandy-Hellville-&-the-Cult-of-Fast-Fashion
Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

Brandy Melville is a trendy brand known for its teen-targeted styles such as short, single-size denim shorts, heart-filled camis, and various sweatshirts with the word “Malibu” printed on them.

Most worryingly, there are well-documented occurrences of the firm abusing its teenage workers and profiting off the vulnerabilities of young girls, as argued in the recently aired HBO documentary “Brandy Hellville And The Cult Of Fast Fashion”.

The documentary includes witness testimonies from former employees about racism and sizeism practices at the stores as well as the general effects of the fast fashion business model on society and the environment. The filmmakers stated Mr. Stephan Marsan, the company’s elusive chief executive did acknowledge the several attempts to contact him for comments.

According to the movie’s director Eva Orner in an interview last week, a number of ex-employees were apprehensive about being filmed because they had suffered from the threats posed by the company for quite long. Individuals featured on the clip had their faces concealed and were introduced with first names only. “I’ve been in several war zones, dealt with refugees and other life-threatening experiences, and people have been keener to appear on camera,” she remarked.

Ms. Orner, an Australian who has won an Academy Award for the documentary ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’, said she had no idea who Brandy Melville was until producers suggested it to her in 2022 as a possible case that needed further investigation. However, the more she learned about the brand, the more upset she became as she discovered that teenage girls, including celebrities like Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner, treated the company like a cult.

“These are the values that are in this T-shirt: It is racism, it is antisemitism, it is exploitation” Ms. Orner reported. “I’m hoping parents are watching this and are horrified”.

To some degree, Brandy Melville can be placed in the same category as Zara, H&M, and other fast-fashion retailers, which are willing to pay for volume and provide fashion trends in rapid cycles but its political architecture is pretty “chaotic, messy, and unclear”. Ms. Orner said.

As stated in the film, each Brandy Melville shop has a different shell company but the Brandy Melville trademark belongs to a Swiss company. Kate Taylor, an author of the Business Insider 2021 investigation into the firm which served as the basis for a lot of the footage, had this to say within the movie. And of course, Mr. Marsan has a near non-existent online footprint despite being at the helm of a brand that has come to rely on its success downloaded from Instagram altogether.

Ex-employees of Brandy Melville would later when asked in the documentary give examples of instances where the top brass requested to buy the outfits worn by the employees for duplication purposes. On social media, the firm faced criticism for copying creations by other artists, with Forever 21 filing a lawsuit against them in 2016 for copyright violations. Court records indicate that the matter was settled quietly behind doors.

Usually, the business markets most of its items for sale in one incredibly small size, which it calls “one size fits all.” this policy Mr. Marsan defended as necessary to the brand’s remaining ‘elite’ while former executives interviewed for the documentary said that the policy attracted more and more criticism further helping bolster the brand.

The documentary even has social media posts of customers claiming to have shed some pounds in order to wear the clothing manufactured by the brand. Several ex-employees stated they had eating disorders while being employed at Brandy Melville, and numerous others pointed out that the pressure to be thin while gaining employment was detrimental to their self-esteem.

This is not the only instance of a former employee who disliked her own body and remarked that due to the nature of her job, such feelings were normal.

It was said by employees in the film that the company purposefully searched for thin white women who were frequently recruited on the spot when they visited the store. Others claimed they had to photograph themselves in full body clothes every day and send it to Mr. Marsan, who sometimes discharged them just because he did not like the way they looked.

Three former employees also confirmed that the sales floor was made up of mostly white employees while people of color were assigned to roles within the stock room that were not in the open.

In remarks made by the company, Ms. Taylor said allegations that “serious racism” was present were also contained in two lawsuits which Ms. Mansoor, one of the company executives, had made remarks about during her court’s preliminary data review of these were also denied by the court. One of their executives mentioned that the store owned by him in either Toronto or Washington was shut down by Mr. Marsan for the reason that it was frequented by colored people.

As it was reported, the company’s employees in Italy also exchanged racist messages in a group chat with executives.

Lt. Ms. Taylor, along with two other executives from the documentary, has noted the existence of a group chat called “Brandy Melville gags” in which senior members also shared Mikael and racist jokes. One former executive featured in the film states that one image showed a woman dressed as a jezebel with a sign “Miss Auschwitz 1943”.

It is known that Mr. Marsan, his brother, owners of the stores, and the members of the production circle of this company in Italy were active participants in the chat according to one of the former owners of the store.

The group chat was referenced numerous times in Ms. Taylor’s article in Business Insider. Orner explained that Brandy “had their evil genius moment (for which) nothing happened” during the exhibition. They only “turned off the comments section for a very short period of time” and did not engage in further action. The comment section was disabled on their website but after that, “business as usual”.

Because the ρίllarin John does not mention certain things, many of its garments are produced at a middle-class factory in Prato, Italy, staffed by illegal Chinese immigrants, Ms. Orner stated. The city is host to a number of manufacturers for fast-fashion brands, but certain fast-fashion brands, reportedly, have an out-landish business style, tarnishing the reputation of the city. (He did not address whether this applied to Brandy Melville’s factory.)

They also managed to reach Ghana, where numerous used clothes from the United States and Europe get supplied and clutter the rivers. According to Ms. Orner, Brandy Melville’s business model is about generating large amounts of low-cost and fashionable durable goods that are likely to be poorly disposed of. This coupled with flooding the market with these goods to influential personalities as a means of promotion has become very fashionable.

According to Orner, “You can’t make a film about fashion without its essence which is the fact that nearly everyone is exploited starting with the workers, going through the models, the retailers to the consumers. All of them are being exploited.’”

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