Brandy Melville: You Can Keep Your Basic White Tees

Did you know that the popular retail chain store, Brandy Melville’s brand and logo was inspired by their fabricated love story of an American girl named Brandy and an English guy named Melville who met in Rome and fell in love? Well, neither did I. Unfortunately the actual tale behind the label Brandy Melville is much less lovey dovey, and a lot more controversial. 

Brandy Melville is an Italian-owned international clothing and accessories fashion brand with a target audience of teenage girls and young women. The founders, Silvio Marsan and his son, Stephan Marsan established Brandy Melville in 1970, and by 2015 the brand had grown to 95 stores worldwide. 

Brandy Melville’s Instagram is filled with pages of pretty, thin, white girls who we all want to be. They are cool, popular, laid-back, chic, the kind of girl you want to be friends with. They live beautiful, glossy lives that they document for their followers to salivate over. They are everything, and more without even trying. Although many of us secretly know that Brandy is unethical and doesn’t stand for what’s right, people continue to buy and support Brandy Melville. This is in part because we know how exclusive Brandy is, which makes us want it even more, we want to be special, we want to be part of the club, we want to be hired on the spot as a Brandy model, we want validation of being pretty and skinny. Brandy Melville knows this and it plays into the insecurities that many teenage girls struggle with. It encourages us to believe that if we buy and wear their products, we will be worthy and valuable. Don’t let them trick you! I see you surfing Brandy’s website clicking add to bag on the “Cara Ruffle Skirt.” Don’t do it!

Brandy Melville’s research and marketing plan is undeniably a work of genius. Despite originating from Europe, Brandy Melville adjusts the sizes, style, and cost of clothing depending on their consumers. This is determined by taking what they call “store style” pictures of the clothing that customers wear while shopping in-store at Brandy Melville. Their product-research team is made up of teenage employees 15 years old and up in an effort to remain contemporary. Young Brandy models will get to choose some free apparel after they shoot for the company. The clothing these girls pick out will be put into the Brandy Melville data system, so the label can tell what is working and what isn’t and modify accordingly. Similar to Primark, Brandy puts very little emphasis on usual marketing techniques such as advertisements and instead relies heavily upon exposure through social media platforms, particularly Instagram. Photo shoots for Brandy are mainly taken on iPhone by a hired photographer with a model or group of models. These extremely low budget photo shoots create an effortless yet cool aesthetic and generate more press because the models, who usually have their own substantial Instagram following, will post pictures from the shoots tagging Brandy Melville. The official Brandy Melville USA Instagram account has accumulated a total of 3.8 million followers. This cycle is a beneficial trade that garners more opportunities, publicity, and money for both the model and company, while preying upon the insecurities of young consumers. 

Brandy Melville has a “One Size Fits Most” policy, with a few exceptions for differently styled jeans and oversized hoodies. Yes, it’s 2020 and a popular fashion company that according to the Fashion Law generated around 300 million in 2018, still hasn’t made their clothes in more than one size. Brandy Melville is not a petite clothing brand despite only offering sizes XS to S. A petite clothing brand, similar to a plus-size clothing brand, carries a range of sizes and specifically caters to people who are petite and may not fit into clothing from other stores. In contrast, by adopting a “One Size Fits Most” slogan, Brandy is validating the idea that skinny is the ideal and normal body type. This is extremely harmful to their clientele of young women who may be led to believe that they need to change their bodies in order to be pretty and accepted. Brandy models are very young, around 15 years old, which means their bodies are not fully developed, yet this “look” is marketed to women from ages 12 to 20. The CDC’s 2016 study found that the average waist size for female adolescents aged 13 to 19 is 32.6 inches, yet the Brandy’s “one size” typically coincides to the size zero with a waist size of 23 to 24 inches. That puts Brandy Melville’s definition of a beautiful and normal waist around 9.6 inches significantly off that of an average teenage girl. Brandy Melville spokespeople haven’t been vocal about the controversial policy and show no signs of changing it. In a now deleted interview from 2013, executive Jessy Longo said “We can satisfy almost everybody, but not everybody.” “The one-size-fits-most clothing might turn off somebody if they don't walk into the store, but if you walk in you'll find something even if it's a bag." Do you expect teenage girls that don’t fit into a size XS or S to just buy a bag from a store that focuses mainly on clothing? I don’t think so. Brandy Melville is putting out a message to their young and impressionable audience that if you aren’t slim then you aren’t welcome in their store and if you don’t fit their clothes then your body isn't like most peoples’. 

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Or should I say the racist, white-centric elephant that engulfs Brandy Melville’s Instagram page. Yes, Brandy Melville did not only choose a size that fit their aesthetic, they chose a race. Scrolling through Brandy Melville’s online website and official Instagram makes it painfully clear that people of color almost don’t exist in the company’s fantasy world. And for those of you familiar with Brandy, can you even imagine what Brandy Melville would look like with a lot of black girls modelling for it, because I can’t. It would completely alter the entire image that Brandy has so carefully curated. A popular tik toker, under the username calliejeanxo, posted a video on May 24, 2020 calling out the brand for cultivating a racist and fatphobic culture that led to discriminatory hiring practices. In Callie’s first tik tok on the subject, which has rapidly amassed more than 6.1 million views, Callie said she worked for Brandy for around three months in 2013 before she quit due to the “toxic environment” and recalled an instance when she had to turn away a potential worker because of their race. In following videos she addressed questions from commenters and more details about her experience, including how girls were asked not to wear makeup and were hired solely based on whether they had a certain look that the manager liked. “Every single girl there was gorgeous. It was so intimidating to be working with. And, yes, the majority of them were white.” Callie said “Clearly it was an aesthetic of that store, which is f***ed up.” Other social media users were quick to show their support by recounting a bad experience with the company or calling for a boycott. Although Brandy Melville originated from Italy, it is an online and worldwide label with locations in Asia, the United States, Europe, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Brandy has an obligation to portray all types of people. Another Italy-based fashion company, Benetton Group S.r.l., that was established in 1965 demonstrated how equal representation is possible and good. Benetton was an iconic brand in the 1980s and 1990s that is most well-known for its “United Colors” multiracial advertising campaign, which focused on raising awareness for worldwide issues and was the first major clothing label that built their brand off diversity. In contrast, Brandy Melville also has yet to show their support for the Black Lives Matter protests happening around the world, following the horrifying deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless more at the hand of police brutality. As said in a Youtube video titled, “the end of Brandy Melville,” “The two white men who run Brandy Melville literally have no moves left. If they speak out they look like hypocrites and people will hate them. If they don’t speak out, which they won’t, they also get canceled. If they speak out and try to prove how much they’ve changed… it’s still gonna look like damage control, which it is.” 

If you want another reason to hate this brand, Brandy Melville negatively impacts the environment. Fast fashion clothing is created quickly in order to make a profit at the cost of cutting environmental corners that the world can no longer afford to cut. As explained in a New York Times article, “How Fast Fashion Is Destroying the Planet,” by now, more than 60 percent of fabric fibers consist of synthetics obtained from fossil fuels, which means that when our clothing ends up in landfills or polluting oceans and glaciers, it will not decay. Good On You, a world-leading, trusted source of brand ratings, articles, and guides on ethical and sustainable fashion, has given Brandy Melville a whooping “We avoid” rating for providing “insufficient relevant information about how it reduces its impact on people, the planet, or animals.” Alternatives to fast fashion include thrift shopping and stores that are sustainable, cruelty-free, organic, eco-friendly and ethically-sourced such as People Tree and Thought Clothing. 

Companies, especially popular ones, have a responsibility to be size-inclusive, eco-friendly, and justly represent diversity. If we wish to see real change, brands must be held accountable for their actions and what they stand for. We have to expect more from the stores we shop at, seriously there’s a whole Tik Tok community dedicated to rude Brandy employees, heighten your standards already. Don’t throw away the Brandy Melville clothing that you own because that would be wasteful. But be aware that when you wear Brandy clothes, which have a very recognizable style, you are endorsing and normalizing their oppressive standards to everyone around you. Next time you find yourself on the Brandy Melville website, ask yourself the question whether you would buy this basic, white tee if you saw it at a Walmart, or if you are only buying it because you have been seduced by the idea of what Brandy is. Instead, make an effort to support indigenous or black-owned businesses and transition into buying more sustainable pieces from size-inclusive stores that have models of all skin tones and shapes.