Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

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.

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.

To sum up it's very, very, boring...

This isn't really about Brandy Melville and there isn't any investigation or journalism.

It was clever, in a morally corrupt kind of way to use the positive Brandy Melville Brand to promote a film that is negative about Brandy Melville. This method show the depth of personality of the director/authors. I'm sad for their parents.

To be generous this is a super boring waste of time. It drones on repeating itself over and over and over again...

The movie can be summed up in 4 words: Retail consumption is bad.

Imagine making the most generic and thoughtless statements like everything potentially bad about clothing, business, and teenagers. Said in a sad boring un thought-provoking mentally corrupt kind of way.

I don't usually write reviews on here, but as a father with teenage daughters, this felt important. A lot of reviews on here are complaining about nonsense. This is an eye opening documentary. Everyone needs to see this to understand that the price of the clothes that we wear is so much more than what's on the price tag.

This should be required viewing for all teenagers. As a high school teacher, I have seen firsthand how detrimental the mentalities that fast fashion push are to our young people. This is important filmmaking.

The pacing is compelling, the interviews are enlightening, and the overall message is everything a documentary should be: sobering and ultimately helpful.

Do yourself a favor and watch.

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.