Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

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.

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.

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.

The negative reviews are over the top. I found this to be an insightful documentary. I'm glad they didn't censure or coach any of the girls who were interviewed... they were fully themselves. Any complaints that the girls were annoying... is honestly stupid to say here in a review. That's your personal opinion about real people who were not scripted... this is not a fictional movie. This is about a fairly controversial clothing brand that's geared toward teenage girls... not about underpaid librarians or something... Get a grip.

I very much appreciated and enjoyed this documentary. I had no idea about Brandy Melville previously. I will gladly discourage my niece from ever shopping there, too. The CEO is a toxic pig.