Brandy Melville Conspiracy? April 28, 2024
Jamie Heffez
What happened to Brandy Melville?
I’m sure everyone has heard of the clothing company, Brandy Melville. If you have not, this is a famous clothing store that is also sold at Pacsun and is infamous for their “one size fits all” clothing pattern and basically creating clothing that can only be worn by their idea of beauty standards. Brandy Melville opened in 2009 in the US but was originally opened in the 1980s in Italy. Their approach to clothing was to provide affordable and trendy clothes to people between the ages of 15 and 24. This store blows up their posts all over Pinterest, Instagram, or any platform you name it. It almost became the standard to want to wear brandy melville. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for certain people because they didn’t carry every size. They didn’t even carry sizes, period. It was only one size fits all.
Everyone complained about the issue with the sizing, but no one discussed the issues working at the company. It wasn’t until 2024 when HBO released a documentary discussing the horrible working environment the employees endured while working for Brandy Melville and the racial discrimination that occurred there as well. This documentary highlights the size issue and talks about how their “one size” was equivalent to an American sizing of xs/s, which is not even the average size of Americans.
The director of this documentary, Eva Orner, talks about the costs of fast fashion and even highlights the explosion of teenage girls throughout their careers working for Brandy Melville. The start of the company’s success began when teenage girls would post themselves wearing Brandy’s clothes, and the company, which at the time had 3 million followers, would repost the customers. This led to girls constantly posting pictures in their brandy clothes with hopes of
being reposted by the company. Some of your favorite influencers and celebrities were also paid to promote their clothing, which further led to their success.
This fascination with the company slowly started to fade when consumers started to notice that Brandy was only posting girls with a certain look and aesthetic. They were allegedly only posting girls who were thin, white, and blonde with long hair. This upset and shocked a lot of people, but not enough because people still continued to ignore it and chose to change themselves in ways to hope to be able to fit their standard. There were even claims that Brandy Melville would pay employees for the clothes they were wearing so they could copy their designs.
Overall, I think everyone should watch the documentary because it provides insight on what fast fashion can truly be like and hopefully encourages society to support small businesses and support companies that are inclusive and don’t treat their employees as poorly as Brandy Melville did to theirs. As someone who has shopped at this clothing store, I will make sure that I don’t continue to give my money to companies that don’t support all bodies and ethnicities.