‘Brandy Hellville’: Welcome to a Nightmare of Deadly Consumerism

By Alison Lanier | Film | April 11, 2024 |

By Alison Lanier | Film | April 11, 2024 |

Righteous rage is surely with us this April via our HBO documentaries.

First, there was the excellent and bold Quiet on Set. Which, yikes. And now HBO brings you another avenue toward horrific exploitation and self-interest on the part of the powerful in the form of director Eva Orner’s Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion.

The absolute scum of humanity is on parade in this new documentary movie about the ultra-trendy and ultra-awful brand that is Brandy Melville. The company, infamous for its super-white, super-skinny, one-size-fits-all ideology, is as filthy as it seems. Young girls hired and fired based on appearance is only the very tip of an iceberg of awfulness.

Let’s back up: Brandy Melville is a fast fashion brand that was initially notable for its social media popularity-and the fact that it only carried one size of clothing: tiny. The clothes were intended to be worn exclusively by the people who became Brandy Melville’s prototypical clientele: the skinny white cool girl with money to burn and lots of TikTok followers. I don’t mean to sound dismissive or reductive of these girls — but the underlying racism and sizeism of the company is just truly astounding when you take even a quick glance at their Instagram.

And naturally, the rich man sitting reclusively at the heart of Brandy Melville, inside a whirlwind of deliberately confounding shell companies, is exactly who you think he is. Stephan Marsan is the son of a rich man, and he hates taxes and inclusivity and is a very loud Trumper with a fetish for Ayn Rand’s fantasy world of Atlas Shrugged. (He actually named a sub-label of Brandy Melville “John Galt,” because he is that subtle.) He and other company executives arranged international trips for “favorite” girls and set up isolated housing for young female employees in New York City. There was at least one case of rape recorded — not prosecuted, because the girl was afraid of losing her job. Marsan hung out on an internal text thread that was flooded daily by the most disturbing, bigoted, shocking “jokes,” with a particular affection for Hitler.

Oh, sorry, was I using the past tense? Sorry. That should all be present tense because he is still doing all this right now, with no consequences. There are of course a few pending lawsuits…but by and large the talking heads of Brandy Hellville agree with my own expectation that this rich corporate entity will, at worst, get a slap on the wrist.

Meanwhile, his company churns out clothes copied wholesale from other designers and artists. Often management would tell their almost exclusively young, skinny, white female employees that they liked their clothes … and would sometimes buy said clothes from the girls on the spot in order to copy them.

These young girls have to have their photos taken at the beginning of every shift … at first, full body photos. Then chest and feet photos. The girls weren’t allowed to ask where the photos were being sent.

Well, of course, they were going to that internal group chat. If a girl’s photo was “bad,” Stephan would demand that the girl be fired. Based explicitly on appearances, obviously, in a highly illegal and hideous routine. And of course he kept a file of all of those pictures of young girls. Just for himself. You know. Like a very normal and non-pedophile guy collecting images of underage employees.

Marsan’s empire is so slimy and disgusting it runs the risk of overshadowing the other, harrowing expose couched in this one movie: the environmental and humanitarian disaster that is fast fashion. Through interviews with activists; through horrific footage of discarded clothes, eight feet deep, blanketing a Ghanaian shoreline; and through footage of sweatshop raids, Brandy Hellville doubles as a spotlight onto the industry of fast fashion-the all-consuming drive to produce, produce, produce so many cheap clothes in such horrible conditions that they become a hazard to human life and entire ecosystems.

The movie is basically a story of such extensive and extreme exploitation up and down the fast fashion industry that it’s literally hard to stomach. It’s a true crime view of a serious and disturbing series of issues all rooted in the massive consumerist drive to pursue endless profit and clout, while dehumanizing and exploiting the least powerful.

Even if you don’t watch this movie, it’s worth Googling your local thrift store and aiming your credit card there, instead of to the sale section of Zara or Gap. And please, please, please: stop shopping at Brandy Melville.

Brandy Hellville is now streaming on Max.