‘Brandy Hellville & The Cult Of Fast Fashion’: HBO Doc Reveals Disturbing Behind-The-Scenes Stories Of Teen Employees At One Of The Biggest Retailers Of The 2010’s

Last year, I purchased a basic white tee from a thrift sale for $5. Why did I think this was such a score? The label on the tag: Brandy Melville. Clearly, I’m not immune to the pull of the brand, which was recently exposed in HBO’s Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion.

The doc, which is now streaming on Max, reveals the controversy plaguing the company and its employees, including racism, antisemitism, sexism and exploitation. What struck me were the behind-the-scenes experiences of teens working for Brandy, which only solidified how impressionable, yet instrumental they were in the company’s success as the target demographic for both staff and clientele.

Through interviews with several former employees, the doc explains Brandy’s allure, stemming from its social media presence and surging popularity. But as one former Brandy photographer says in the doc, “behind the curtain, it’s like complete chaos” — a chaos that often fell to the young women working at the brand’s stores.

Brandy employees — mostly white, blonde, attractive teen girls — were required to fit the store’s aesthetic. As the doc reveals, they did this by sending “store style photos,” or pictures of themselves in their outfit to the company’s cagey execs, Stephan Marsan and Jessy Longo.

Emily, one former employee, revealed that “at first, it was only full-body photos,” but “then they started requesting chest and feet pictures.”

Another former employee, Cate, alleges in the doc that when she asked about where the images went, she was told she was “not allowed” to talk about it.

“And that’s when I went, oh, no. There’s something going on that I don’t know about, and I don’t feel safe anymore,” she says, noting that she then put in her two weeks notice.

Brandy’s former Senior VP — one of two previous Brandy Melville associates who hid their identity in the documentary “due to ongoing litigation” — said the pictures would be sent in a “group chat with the managers, [him]self, and Stephan” that they had for each store, “and if Stephan didn’t like some of them, he would have sent it back to [him] privately and say, ‘Fire her.'”

One former employee at Brandy Melville’s New York flagship location even spotted Stephan with a folder containing “every single one of the photos she sent over the years.”

The teens working at Brandy were pawns in the game of big business, being compared to and put up against each other, while also recruiting more of their peers to join the toxic business. Even worse? They were essentially contributing to the brand’s catalogue and aesthetic, but didn’t get any acknowledgment or recognition for doing so.

Perhaps the most egregious example comes from Business Insider investigative journalist Kate Taylor, who wrote an expose on the company in 2021. Taylor says in the doc that Brandy would find product name inspiration from their own employees, explaining, “In some cases, the names of these things on the Brandy Melville website, it’ll be like ‘Jocelyn’s shirt,’ and it’ll be because the shirt was literally purchased off of Jocelyn’s back.”

I think back on my first-ever trip to the SoHo location nearly a decade ago, and how mesmerized I was by the seemingly effortless aesthetic of the inventory. However, the clothing that I found myself so drawn to was not the work of Brandy designers, but rather copies being pulled from (essentially) my peers’ closets.

As if taking inspiration from their own employees’ wardrobes wasn’t bad enough, the company would also exploit their workers for labor they weren’t properly compensated for. Some favorite employees were sent to China or Italy to help select inventory, the doc reveals, but were being paid “close to minimum wage to do what, at another company, the senior leadership might be doing, to make them extremely rich,” as Taylor says.

As Brandy employees, these girls experienced a kind of dual agency and powerlessness. While these favorite employees were sent to “highly competitive” overseas business trips and “treated like queen[s],” as the former Senior VP says, they ultimately didn’t reap any of the organizational benefits — and were getting a measly paycheck to do so.

The doc exemplifies how Brandy wouldn’t have become what it is without the support of its teenage customer base, who also funneled into its staff. The inner workings of the company are dependent on their teen demographic, which begs the question: how could a company become so popular among its base by exploiting the very girls it marketed to most?

As for that basic white tee I purchased, I found a hole in the seam and stains in the armpits soon after I brought it home.

Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion is streaming on Max.