Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

I've only heard of Brandy Melville in discussions of past fashion trends... but I always love a good documentary.

I think this documentary covered all that it needed to, but still fell a bit flat for me. I understood the hype sustained by teenage girls, the strangely predatory business practices that went unnoticed, the casual racism... but it was all "tell" and very little "show." Maybe it was just not possible, but I think lots of more interesting incidents could be found via social media where people regularly "expose" others, such as Tiktok. You're telling me there were no recorded incidents of discrimination/bad attitude from sales reps/etc anywhere???

Obviously those who worked closely for this brand are still suffering the repercussions of that, and I'm not aiming to minimize, but I don't think this film conveyed the impact well enough. Overall an interesting watch, but no re-watch value here in my opinion.

When they show the Toronto store opening in 2012 was that Dustin Milligan announcing the opening? He's not in the credits, looks a lot like him but the cast list isn't complete.

This was very informative and eye-opening, hopefully people will watch and see what happens to "Fast Fashion" clothing, how the young women were treated and how the trend of their clothing to make the average woman think that they are supposed to be "one-size-fits-all" in our society because this is so harmful to anyone's mindset but more so for teenage girls. Companies like this need to be responsible, respectable and culturally aware.

The people behind this documentary definitely want you to be outraged. They're just not entirely clear on what they want you to be outraged about. So the series takes a scattershot approach, throwing everything at the wall and hoping something will stick. There are indictments of demographically-targeted marketing, social media promotion, the fashion industry generally and fast fashion in particular. The approach is broad rather than deep, and devoid of any serious investigation or revelatory insights. Apparently the filmmakers thought that stacking a bunch of nothingburgers together would make a meal, but very little in this supposed expose merits more than a shrug.

Well it was. Good. But it was too slow and most of the girls were annoying. It was good to watch but there were parts that actually made me hate brandy Melville. It is good to educate you but it is also really boring and made me want to punch the screen. It's gonna get repetitive here because I still have three hundred letters left. I would reccomend if you want to learn, but if you have anger issues I would find something else. The girls were saying annoying things in an annoying way. I really don't know what else to say, but I thought it was bad at first. It got good near the end. It felt really long.

As "Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion" (2024 release; 92 min) opens, we hear from a young woman, talking about her first purchase at Brandy Mellville when she was a 7th grader. We then go back in time to learn about the origins of the company, with its Italian founder Stephen Marsan quickly focusing in on the US market despite not speaking English whatsoever. At this point we are 10 minutes in the movie.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from Oscar-winning producer-writer-director Eva Orner ("Taxi to the Dark Side"). Here she pulls back the curtain on a company that became a phenom for teenage girls (core focus on 14-15-16 year olds). Also how skinny white teenage girls (preferable with blond hair and blue eyes) were the key focus for store employees. Then it gets much worse, including among others blatant anti-Semitism among the company management. The documentary also addresses the waste crisis resulting from fast fashion. The footage from Ghana is shocking, to say the least. (Note that this waste crisis is also addressed in another recent documentary called "Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy".) Combine off of these separate but related issues, and this makes for very sobering viewing, and then some.

"Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion" premiered at this year's South by Southwest festival, to immediate acclaim. This documentary is currently rated 100% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems quite generous to me. This is now streaming on Max, where I saw it the other night. If you have any interest in Brandy Melville's business practices or in the crisis of waste, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.