HBO
Exploitative to the planet and the ladies who’ve starved themselves to suit into its childlike garments, Brandy Melville is positioned as the last word fast-fashion empire. Pap pictures of Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner are spliced with drone pictures of hellish landfill websites in Accra, Ghana. The purpose is made apparent: trend manufacturers like Brandy Melville have constructed themselves on colonial fantasies at each a picture and industrial degree, however there are too-long segments rehashing quick trend’s environmental injury that, although necessary, might make up a separate movie. Youngsters aren’t the guileless customers this program generally suggests: these individuals perceive that low-cost clothes is unhealthy, and but the need to be perceived as cool will all the time take priority. The documentary ends with a plea to boycott Brandy Melville, however even when the journalist Kate Taylor reported on Marsan’s sickening practices again in 2021–prompting mass resignations and ceremonial burnings of its product–the model’s gross sales totalled $212.5 million in 2023 with out having to alter its inside methods.
From Hilter memes to a discriminatory method to hiring and firing, listed below are the 5 most stunning allegations to have emerged in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Quick Trend.
The enterprise mannequin is unclear
Regardless of its surf shack interiors, Brandy Melville just isn’t a Californian enterprise. It was based within the ’80s by Italian businessman Stephan Marson, the scion of textile entrepreneur Silvio Marsan. The model itself took its title from two fictional lovers of Stephan’s making: an American woman (Brandy) and an Englishman (Melville). In her 2021 report, Taylor found that every of the enterprise’s shops is owned by a special shell firm, whereas the trademark for “Brandy Melville” is owned by a Swiss agency. The documentary implies that that is the form of company construction designed to be untraceable. Brandy Melville has no public CEO and there are not any top-down model ambassadors, simply shopper generated photos that proliferate its social media accounts. Past two Google photos, Marsan himself has zero web presence. He declined to be within the movie.
Folks had been employed and fired based mostly on their seems to be alone
Based on former retailer managers, the enterprise went to excessive lengths to rent skinny, white teenagers, who had been usually recruited on the spot whereas purchasing. Within the custom of Abercrombie & Fitch, its gross sales associates had been inspired to stay skinny to be able to match into the model’s one-size-fits-all merchandise. This “firm coverage” is reported to have left giant swathes of employees members with extreme consuming problems. Within the New York flagship, an ex-employee stated Marsan put in a crimson flare on the money register that he might gentle up from his in-store mezzanine every time he noticed a buyer whom he needed photographed and employed. Black workers had been relegated to work behind the tills and in inventory rooms–or in any other case fired on the spot alongside anybody Marsan deemed too giant or alternative-looking–whereas blonde and red-headed women had been rewarded with larger salaries regardless of being ineffective employees. “Should you’re white, it’s a must to be in sight,” one Black interviewee recalled.
The “Made in Italy” tags sanitise questionable labor practices
The corporate’s provide chain is opaque, however the filmmakers go to Prato within the northeast of Tuscany, the place Brandy Melville produces most of its clothes utilizing Chinese language immigrant employees in sweatshops beneath the “Made in Italy” label. “It’s a gimmick,” stated the area’s mayor Matteo Biffoni. “As a result of the one Italian factor is the location of the corporate and little extra. The issue is, regardless of the checks we stock out and the eye we put into it, there are some corporations which aren’t legit. There are a number of pronto modo [fast fashion factories] which might be common, however generally we discover individuals which might be like slaves. That’s one thing objectively very painful to see.” Biffoni doesn’t make clear whether or not this pertains to Brandy Melville’s models.
Alarming too, is when the documentary movies in Kantamanto, Ghana, which is the place Brandy Melville’s waste product and that of numerous different manufacturers will get dumped en masse. Kayayei–the native head porters–who carry bales of second-hand clothes that weigh a minimal of 120lbs have suffered lifelong injury to their spines, the cartilage fused into scoliosis. “Trend has been constructed on these very racist, colonial constructions,” stated the CEO of Remake Advocacy Group, Ayesha Barenblat, “and on the backs of largely girls of color, and the way in which the trade will get away with abusive conditions is by dehumanising this workforce. These girls are hidden from our consciousness.” Simply as disturbing: the close by seashores are strewn with shoulder-deep tangles of discarded clothes. One employee suspects the ocean flooring across the metropolis is totally lined in garments. Brandy Melville’s enterprise mannequin is constructed on churning out low-cost objects which might be destined to line the seabed.
Prime executives shared Hitler memes in a bunch chat
Brandy Melville’s senior management group shared anti-Semitic memes and pornographic photos in a bunch chat known as “Brandy Melville Gags”, in keeping with Kate Taylor and two executives interviewed. A very stomach-turning screenshot contains a skeletal girl wearing a sash bearing the phrases “Miss Auschwitz, 1943”. The documentary alleges that the majority, if not all, of Brandy Melville’s prime executives had been members of that thread, which included an edited photograph of Marsan’s face on Hitler’s physique. Evidently Brandy Melville’s higher-ups recurrently transgressed skilled and ethical boundaries. The movie additionally features a significantly harrowing account of a employees member reportedly being spiked and sexually assaulted at a Brandy Melville-owned condo in Manhattan–as instructed by one other former employees member within the documentary.
The model ran a foot pic farm from contained in the shops
Brandy Melville used shopper generated promoting, which regularly included individuals who labored in-store. This gave managers the license–and the gross sales associates the motivation–to {photograph} and textual content day by day images to Marsan to maintain for potential inclusion. (These would even be used for product analysis, that means the manufacturing group in Prato might mass produce the employees’s personal garments.) Over time, Marsan was alleged to have requested for full-body photos, with an categorical directive for them to incorporate the Brandy Melville women’ chests and ft. It’s claimed he would hearth them if he didn’t like the way in which they appeared, whereas the “prime” workers had been despatched to China to seek the advice of on new product strains – doing the work of a C-suite govt on near minimal wage.
