SXSW 2024: Brandy Hellville & The Cult Of Fast Fashion

(Written by Allison Brown)

Although my knowledge of Brandy Melville is limited, the brand’s controversy is hard to ignore. Despite this understanding, I was unprepared for the extremely problematic content in Brandy Hellville & The Cult Of Fast Fashion. By now, one would think that we, as a culture, have moved on from allowing rich and disconnected white men to make attire for adolescent women’s bodies. In comparable docs, Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons and White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, we were warned of the chauvinism, superficiality, and sexual harassment inevitable in this kind of pressure cooker. Nevertheless, Brandy Melville came into existence several years later, imbuing a despicable, middle-aged Italian man, Stephan Marsan, with the power to build an equally profitable (and toxic) Americana aesthetic and product targeted at preteens. Even worse than its predecessors, the creators here did so with shoddy materials and on the backs of smaller brands, ripping off designs with zero shame.

Rather than focus entirely on the business itself, Brandy Hellville jumps back and forth between a critique of the label’s repugnant behavior and the consequences of surplus, discarded, fast fashion in Ghana. Juxtaposition is at times harsh, depicting how needlessly shallow the payoff is for such dark supply chains. This ultimately comes across too political for its own audience. Those tuning into a casual, pop culture documentary on a streaming platform are likely looking for drama and company “tea” to be spilled. The aforementioned documentaries were more successful, as they chose a deep dive on the enterprise itself, rather than endeavoring to include the trending concerns at hand in the industry.

We all know that disposable, cheap clothes are bad for the environment and likely use sweatshop quality labor. As a result, it feels like a chore when director Eva Orner delves into these tangents to remind us. The issue at hand is too systemic to solve unless one directly affects the industry through their own careers; reducing expenditures and consumption of unethical products is not going to significantly halt production. This mantra seems to be the director’s choice takeaway, but it is hard to believe this will make any major impact without imposed legislation. Perhaps, activism is a better call to action.

The average viewer is more apt to be compelled by Marsan’s insane requests, behavior, inability to accept fault, and antisemitic and racist tendencies, as well as those who abhorrently went along with it all without questioning. This half is incredible in its best moments, such as revealing a hateful text chat between company leadership, describing daily staff “fit checks” distributed nefariously through management, and sharing an endless supply of offenses to leave the audience dumbfounded. Talking-head interviews are well-balanced in sources, and keep the narrative organized and reliable. These include contribution from investigative journalists, fashion reporters, store staff, freelance photographers, company leadership, representatives from the Or Foundation in Ghana, fabric producers along the supply chain, and most impressively, the actual mayor of Prato, the city where Brandy factories are built. Some of these individuals are disclosed to be actors, but thankfully they blend in seamlessly with real people, and are impossible to distinguish.

While I may not have been able to grasp the scope of Brandy Melville, as I was slightly aged out of its target market at its peak, I still found all the chaos surrounding it exceptionally intriguing. Patriarchy is at the forefront of American culture, and no matter how many corrupt professionals are cancelled, new grotesque male leaders are empowered by a forgetful public each year. If it is not unavoidable knowledge, consumers do not do the work to figure out who pulls the strings behind the curtains of the products they purchase. We unknowingly make appalling people rich every day. Something must change in society if we want to have any hope of putting those more worthy in leadership positions.

Brandy Hellville & The Cult Of Fast Fashion will make one question the origins behind their wardrobe when it premieres at the 2024 South by Southwest Film Festival on Monday, March 11^th.