Brandy Melville, a fashion brand popular among teenage girls, has been the subject of recent controversy with the release of the 2024 documentary “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion.” The film depicts the brand’s alleged discriminatory practices and treatment of young women, yet the store remains incredibly popular among teenage girls. Many seem content to ignore the brand’s seemingly racist and exclusionary beliefs, blissfully posting “hauls” and participating in photoshoots of the clothing with their friends. Brandy Melville only sells one size in its clothing (size small), following their signature tagline “one size fits all,” which was later changed to “one size fits most” following consumer backlash. Despite this exclusionary practice, the company made $212.5 million in 2023, allowing the brand’s mysterious founder Stephan Marsan and other top executives to quietly rake in cash while their young employees are paid minimum wage for working grueling hours. Brandy Melville’s Instagram page and website portray no models of color or models with diverse body types (besides skinny), aligning with the strict beauty standards set by Marsan. While the brand has no published mission statement or a public CEO to make statements, Brandy Melville certainly seems to promote exclusivity, intending their clothing only for skinny white girls.
I spoke with my friend Lila, a junior in high school, about her experience with Brandy Melville. Lila shared, “I think that Brandy Melville contributes to a toxic beauty standard of thinness and whiteness through its one-size policy and the models it portrays on its website. I think it needlessly excludes people and makes people feel like their bodies aren’t ‘right’ because they don’t fit into their clothes or look like their models. However, I can understand people’s desire to wear Brandy Melville’s clothing because it gives them a feeling of belonging and fitting in.”
Brandy Melville’s discriminatory practices have been revealed in testimonies by former employees, and are also evident by simply looking at the brand’s website, employees, or Instagram page, the US-based Instagram page alone flaunting 3.1 million followers. In stores, Brandy Melville primarily hires skinny white teenagers, and relegates Black employees to night shifts or working in the stock room, out of sight. Stephenie Legros, a former Black employee at Brandy Melville, shares that she was fired under the guise of financial problems and immediately replaced by a white worker who earned higher pay, despite the new employee’s lesser job experience. The store also hired an Asian worker at the same time, disputing their claim of needing to manage their finances, the excuse used to justify Legros’ firing. Marsan, the brand’s leader, is known for micromanaging the Brandy stores and firing employees that he feels do not align with the brand’s image. These employees are employees of color, employees who are not a size 4 or smaller, and employees who wear clothing styles that Marsan considers too “edgy.” For example, Marsan demanded that the Newport Beach store manager be fired after seeing an image of her wearing accessories that he felt did not align with the brand’s public image — chain necklaces.
In addition to the documentary’s reports of Marsan’s discriminatory practices, firing employees and determining an employee’s pay based on looks, Business Insider explains “Every day, girls who work at the fast-fashion stores are required to send a full-body photo to executives,” a tradition referred to as “staff style.” Brandy Melville executives claim that this practice is used to help the brand keep an eye on clothing trends among teenage girls, yet the texted images are often used to determine if an employee should be fired. If Marsan decides that he doesn’t like a girl’s body or outfit, she is fired on the spot and replaced with a different employee who aligns with his ideal of a “Brandy girl.” The 2,000+ images that Marsan is sent every day are kept by the Brandy executives for unknown purposes, although the brand has moved away from the suspicious practice of texting the photos directly to executives, and they are now sent through email.
Business Insider shares, “In the New York City flagship store, Marsan and fellow executives have an elevated work area from which they watched shoppers, according to an employee who quit last year. If they saw someone who fit the Brandy Melville look, they pushed a button, setting off a light that prompted the cashier to ask for the girl’s photo and contact information so she could be recruited.” Business practices such as the one described above — spying on and judging both customers and employees — are central to the brand’s policies, according to Business Insider’s investigation.
Besides the seemingly discriminatory hiring practices and what appears to be a shady “staff style” tradition, Marsan and other brand executives participated in a highly inappropriate group chat, of which over 150 screenshots have now been released, sent by Business Insider and available to view in their investigative article. Within this group chat, brand leaders participated in the sharing of antisemitist memes to keep Marsan content and win his favor, because Marsan is known for spontaneously firing employees. Marsan and other men in the group chat shared pornographic images, racist memes, memes including the n-word, and numerous Hitler memes, including an image created by Marsan himself that put his head onto Hitler’s body. Despite the release of these images from the group chat, no action has been taken against Marsan or other executives, partially because the men are impossible to track down. The brand’s twisted web of shell companies ensures a certain level of protection for high-level executives, because the different companies make it difficult to get in touch with an actual brand leader.
Executives at Brandy Melville have encouraged underage employees to engage in drug and alcohol use inside and outside of the workplace, and numerous stories of sexual assault have been released by former employees. Limits were often crossed for the young women working at Brandy Melville, where the employees were forced to align with an incredibly narrow beauty standard. Business Insider shares, “four former employees in California and New York told Insider there was a belief among some retail workers that if you went fully topless in front of the executives, you might get paid more.” Young women were encouraged by brand executives to undress in front of them and try on the brand’s clothing, and most agreed to do so, in order to keep their jobs and gain favor with executives. A former store manager shared with Business Insider that the Brandy Melville executive Andrea Castagnasso took her out for drinks and proceeded to drug and rape her, but the manager decided not to report the incident because she did not want to threaten her work visa. Rape, sexual assault, underage drinking, and drug use abound within Brandy Melville’s history, because the young women working for the company were often pushed to participate in these activities to gain the favor of brand leaders as well as obtain benefits, such as shopping and travel.
Tales of sexual harassment, antisemitism, and racist and discriminatory practices are plentiful when Brandy Melville is critically examined, the documentary providing a shocking window into the brand’s history. Despite the ugly truth behind the brand’s pretty pastel facade — many of their clothes adorned with cherubs or hearts — the brand is highly sought after among teenage girls ignoring Brandy Melville’s ugly history. Brandy Melville remains incredibly popular on social media, where shopping sprees are posted daily, and on used clothing platforms such as Poshmark and Depop where teenagers scour the retail sites to obtain specific clothing items at reduced prices. Popular American thrift store chain Plato’s Closet even boasts a section of the store dedicated to Brandy Melville clothing. Despite the body image issues and eating disorders promoted by the brand, teenage girls line up to be the first inside a new store and continue to pay Brandy Melville for a brief feeling of belonging.
For more information on the brand, check out the documentary “Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion,” and Business Insider’s investigation.
