Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

~*INCLUSIVITY! BODY POSITIVE! NO SHAME GAME!*~

I should have known. Except I don't have preteen/teen girls, so the brand has flown under the radar for me. Never heard of them, never have seen a brick and mortar store front, seen an ad, nothing. So I was initially intrigued by a doc about a clothing brand and came in, open mind, ready to view.

Despite the insane number of negative reviews, I still wanted to give it a fair chance- and I usually will casually see what kind of a rating something gets before viewing- not because I will/won't watch, but I try and temper expectations.

Started off with a bad taste immediately. These girls/women seems so obtuse- like they're paid stans for the brand. Yammering and stammering, tripping all over each other to gush all over this brand and practically wax philosophical on it. So I get it- you want the viewer immediately smacked in the face with the feeling of cultish, syndromic programming. Then in swoops the 'journalist'. Just in case you are one of the cult members, or maybe you think 'huh this brand is cute, looks affordable and seems like my kinda vibe, she's here to tell you they ARE NOT politically correct and their target audience is unfair!!

I'll let you in on a few secrets and hopefully future filmmakers are paying attention: most people are absolutely disgusted with 'cancel culture' and are now going out of their way to support decent companies/people who do nothing wrong but for some reason, some of the people in the outrage mob were offended. So this machine starts to roll along, except now it's getting incredibly cumbersome. What used to evoke fear and cowering by people has slowly switched over to anger/outrage, and companies who choose not to 'bend the knee' are beginning to be rewarded with even more business if they stand their ground and refuse to apologize.

The economy is an horrific train wreck- nobody has money, can barely swing rent/house payments, grocery prices have increased by triple, and inflation is like an overinflated balloon that ready to pop at any moment. If there's clothing brands that offer us an option that looks good, is affordable and ships directly? Not even a seconds delay deciding whether or not there's a purchase to be made. There's brands available anymore for every body type, size and shape. So this brand happens to cater to a demo of thin teens, there's other brands doing so for big gals, big guys, small guys, muscular guys and gals, etc.

If this doc was meant to repel, it's having the opposite effect- look at the BM stans on IMDb smacking any negative review down and you'll see what I mean. I couldn't even get past halfway before I finally turned it off. There's got to be much better products out there for documentarians to take on and streamers to fund.

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.

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.

To be completely honest, there was nothing much of substance here. The exposé failed to really expose anything that hasn't already been said on youtube. I mean really, it felt almost like they'd just watched a youtube video and threw it together particularly when the subplot (an overall criticism of fast fashion and consumerism) felt detached from the brandy section in any way other then the fact brandy is fast fashion. I also felt that they glossed over a lot of details they could have further analysed such as the whole apartment saga and the fact the owner is allegedly a p***phile. Overall a half baked documentary.

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.