The Brandy Melville Documentary Wasn't Shocking News, and that's a Problem
Graphic by Alexander Hernandez Gonzalez
In Paris, customers face the Brandy Melville flagship store's looming black-framed glass door. Many must squeeze shoulders and hips past the tiny narrow door frame, even turning sideways, as a test of the brand’s most infamous ideal — one size fits most.
HBO Max’s recent documentary “Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion” delves deeper into the brand’s many issues and unethical practices. It explores instances of racism, hiring based on looks and even libertarian ideology. The company also fell into copyright infringement and labor and environmental malpractice, similar to most fast fashion brands.
The documentary makes it very clear that Brandy Melville is a fast fashion brand. It may not feel that way with the existence of ultra-fast fashion giants like Shein and Amazon. It can be easy to think of fast fashion as in-your-face consumerism — constant sales and plastic clothing. Brandy Melville’s basic and dainty image does not exempt it from the fast fashion label.
Courtesy of HBO Max
In the documentary, Emily, a half-Asian former employee from San Jose, California, shared that she and the other minority worker were always the ones working the registers, while the white employees were greeting customers as the face of the brand. Another former employee from New York said no white people were working in the stockroom.
In addition, the documentary shows the company hiring store employees based on their looks. The CEO, Stephan Marsan, kept an office overlooking the sales floor of the flagship store in New York City. The register had a light that lit up when checking out a customer with a look or style he liked. Employees were to offer her a job on the spot.
Executives were also inappropriate with employees. Marsan kept thousands of pictures of young female employees’ outfits. The brand kept an apartment in New York City and ordered Ubers for employees to stay and visit. One employee reported she had been sexually assaulted in the apartment.
Brandy Melville plays into all of the usual fast fashion tropes, exploiting women around the world for profit. Executives bought clothes off store employees’ backs to “mass produce what these cool girls were already wearing.” Some pieces had to be recalled for copyright infringement.
Courtesy of HBO Max
Many Brandy Melville pieces are made in Prato, Italy, the largest textile district in Europe. The mayor of Prato said that many factories there are run as sweatshops. They employ Chinese workers and treat them basically as slaves.
Most are much more familiar with the brand taking advantage of customers in the Global North. The “one size fits most” sizing policy perpetuates harmful beauty standards. The one size is small or extra small, and store employees recovering from restrictive eating disorders worried they would not be able to fit into the clothes anymore. It is company policy to wear the brand while working.
Discarded clothing from the Global North ends up in cities and waterways in the Global South. The documentary focuses on Accra, the capital city of Ghana and home to what once was the largest used clothes market in West Africa. Women in the market carry their body weight in secondhand clothing bales on their heads. This is described as “literally backbreaking,” as their cartilage is crushed and their spines fuse from the weight.
Courtesy of HBO Max
The documentary says 40% of the garments entering the market go into the waste stream. They then wash out to sea from the gutter systems. If a country refuses to keep accepting their clothing waste, the U.S. and European countries will punish them by taking away grant money or their duty-free status.
So many fast fashion brands get away with this behavior because we as consumers allow them to. Brands like Brandy Melville become so big because we continue to idolize a thin, white, fashion ideal. Companies will not change their practices if we as customers do not force them to.