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 photographs of Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner are spliced with drone photographs of hellish landfill websites in Accra, Ghana. The purpose is made apparent: style manufacturers like Brandy Melville have constructed themselves on colonial fantasies at each a picture and industrial stage, however there are too-long segments rehashing quick style’s environmental injury that, although necessary, might make up a separate movie. Youngsters aren’t the guileless customers this program typically suggests: these individuals perceive that low-cost clothes is dangerous, and but the will to be perceived as cool will at all times 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 vary its inside methods.

From Hilter memes to a discriminatory strategy to hiring and firing, listed below are the 5 most stunning allegations to have emerged in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Quick Vogue.

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 identify from two fictional lovers of Stephan’s making: an American lady (Brandy) and an Englishman (Melville). In her 2021 report, Taylor found that every of the enterprise’s shops is owned by a distinct 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 aren’t any top-down model ambassadors, simply shopper generated pictures that proliferate its social media accounts. Past two Google pictures, Marsan himself has zero web presence. He declined to be within the movie.

Folks have been employed and fired based mostly on their appears alone

Based on former retailer managers, the enterprise went to excessive lengths to rent skinny, white teenagers, who have been usually recruited on the spot whereas procuring. Within the custom of Abercrombie & Fitch, its gross sales associates have been inspired to stay skinny with a purpose to match into the model’s one-size-fits-all merchandise. This “firm coverage” is reported to have left giant swathes of workers members with extreme consuming problems. Within the New York flagship, an ex-employee mentioned Marsan put in a purple flare on the money register that he might mild up from his in-store mezzanine every time he noticed a buyer whom he wished photographed and employed. Black staff have 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 ladies have been rewarded with greater salaries regardless of being ineffective employees. “In the event you’re white, you must 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,” mentioned 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 feature out and the eye we put into it, there are some firms which aren’t legit. There are loads of pronto modo [fast fashion factories] which can be common, however typically we discover individuals which can 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. “Vogue has been constructed on these very racist, colonial constructions,” mentioned the CEO of Remake Advocacy Group, Ayesha Barenblat, “and on the backs of principally 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 coated in garments. Brandy Melville’s enterprise mannequin is constructed on churning out low-cost objects which can be destined to line the seabed.

Prime executives shared Hitler memes in a gaggle chat

Brandy Melville’s senior management staff shared anti-Semitic memes and pornographic pictures in a gaggle chat referred to as “Brandy Melville Gags”, based on Kate Taylor and two executives interviewed. A very stomach-turning screenshot encompasses 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 have been members of that thread, which included an edited picture of Marsan’s face on Hitler’s physique. Plainly Brandy Melville’s higher-ups recurrently transgressed skilled and ethical boundaries. The movie additionally features a significantly harrowing account of a workers member reportedly being spiked and sexually assaulted at a Brandy Melville-owned residence in Manhattan–as informed by one other former workers 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 each day images to Marsan to maintain for potential inclusion. (These would even be used for product analysis, which means the manufacturing staff in Prato might mass produce the workers’s personal garments.) Over time, Marsan was alleged to have requested for full-body footage, with an specific directive for them to incorporate the Brandy Melville ladies’ chests and toes. It’s claimed he would hearth them if he didn’t like the way in which they appeared, whereas the “prime” staff have been despatched to China to seek the advice of on new product traces – doing the work of a C-suite government on near minimal wage.