The director of HBO’s new documentary Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion never wanted the film to be just another brand exposé, even though it does, in part, operate on that level.
In the film, which airs on HBO on Tuesday, helmer Eva Orner highlights allegations of a racist, sexist and discriminatory work environment at cult teen-girl brand Brandy Melville from former employees at various levels of the label. Young women who once worked as teens in the fast-fashion stores — where, famously, there has long been primarily one, small size on offer — describe taking “store style photos” every day for company leaders to scrutinize their outfits, for instance. A former senior vp who received those photos claims that the brand’s CEO Stephan Marsan would order him to fire employees whose appearances he didn’t like. (One employee says full-body images morphed at one point into requests for “chest and feet” photos.)
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The documentary shows snippets from a group text allegedly involving company leaders that contained crude sexual and racist jokes, while some workers recall how people of color were relegated to less front-facing roles at the store. (Orner builds on an investigation originally conducted by Business Insider reporter Kate Taylor, who appears in the film.)
But Orner also uses Brandy Melville to epitomize the larger system of abuse she sees in fast fashion in general: “I really wanted to go a little into the exploitation of workers and also the environmental damage done by the industry,” she says. “It makes it a harder film to weave all of these complex ideas into, but I thought without it, it wouldn’t be as impactful.” The documentary spends time in Accra, Ghana, the site of massive secondhand clothing market Kantamanto, where clothes pollute local waterways and wash ashore on beaches. The mayor of Prato, Italy — where some Brandy Melville and other fast-fashion garments are produced — describes sometimes finding people “like slaves” who are employed illegally at factories. The overall message of the doc, says Orner, is “buy less.”
A few days before the documentary’s release, Orner discussed the difficulties she faced in gathering on-camera interviews for the film, Brandy Melville’s current cultural resonance and why she hopes parents and teens will be “horrified” by the revelations in the documentary.
Why did it make sense to you to have Brandy Melville exemplify labor and environmental issues with fast fashion?
Because it’s worse than a lot of other companies. Obviously, look, there are some really terrible companies out there: It started with Zara, now it’s Shein and Fashion Nova. But what’s interesting about Brandy is it hits every bad mark: It is fast fashion, there is exploitation of workers, they employ very young people, underage people, they exploit them, they don’t pay them properly. They are shockingly racist and that is very open and clear. They are shockingly antisemitic. There’s something very creepy, predatory and discriminatory about the way they operate. Kate Taylor, who did the initial exposé at Business Insider talks about it when she says, “This company is not like every other company.” It is very deliberate and very opaque, and I think there’s a lot there to explore. Also Brandy’s got this very cult-like following, which I think also makes it different from a lot of other labels, people really defend it. I think it’s a pretty dark story.
How did you find the process of gathering people with firsthand experience to appear on camera?
I’ve done so many films in war zones and with refugees, and when I started this I was like, what is happening here? I can’t get people to speak. We reached out to hundreds of girls. I think part of [the reticence to speak] is because they’re young girls, they’re scared. They’re scared of the company, they’re scared of the owners, and they’re also starting their careers. This [film] is something that will be on streaming service globally and an employer might not want to hire them because they’ve spoken out. And I totally respect that. I understand the fear and it is not easy to be a whistleblower, but the women who said yes are brave and fearless and super honest. So the start was the girls, the young women now, who were ex-employees of Brandy. And I like to call them the heroes of this story because probably 95 percent or more of the women I spoke to didn’t want to be in the film.
Given that there has been prior reporting about Brandy Melville, was there anything that really surprised you in the filmmaking process?
There was so much. There were just little things like [employees] being asked to take the photos and submit them to management. These were really young girls, they were 15, 16, 17, [for] most of them it was their first job and they didn’t know what normal was, and so they were so easy to manipulate. [There were] details like the button that [CEO] Stephan put next to cash registers in the New York store so that he could sit and watch, and if a pretty girl was paying, he would buzz the buzzer, and then the young girls [at the register] would offer them jobs really uncomfortably.
I found the fact that these men that run the company have young daughters really disturbing. I don’t want to drag people’s families into these films, I don’t think it’s necessary, but they all have young daughters, who by accounts from former employees, wouldn’t fit into the clothing at Brandy Melville. And I found that really dark, these men perpetuating this myth of what a woman should be and not foisting it on grown adult women, but manipulating young women. But I think the biggest shock to me was standing on the beach in Accra in Ghana and seeing where all of our clothes end up. I found that that is something you can’t unsee, and I hope it has the same effect in the film.
Do you have a particular target audience for the documentary, such as teen girls?
Since the trailer came out about a week ago, it’s had I think over 2.8 million views on TikTok, which is staggering for a documentary. Every time I check my Instagram messages, there’s just scores of young women who say, “Oh my God, thank you so much, this is my story. Can I be in the film?” It’s been really heartening to [see] the response to the trailer on TikTok because obviously that is teenage girl heaven. So I think it’s got a life of its own there, and I hope that translates into audience as well. I think the other key audience for this is parents. I’m hoping parents watch this with their kids and I hope they’re horrified. I want there to be screenings in schools and colleges and for people to talk about it. And I’m hoping that next week after it starts airing, it’s a little bit like what used to be the water cooler conversation at work. I hope that at school everyone is talking about it, and this is an example of [how] TikTok can work if people keep posting from the film and not posting that they want to buy clothes.
After going through this process of making this film, have you found certain particular solutions to the quandary of fashion’s environmental and labor impact?
There’s a million things you can do. You can rent clothing and have a very small capsule wardrobe. That still has an impact because of all the sending back and forth, that has a footprint, but it’s better. You can resell and buy secondhand clothes, whether you are young with a limited budget on Depop, or you can buy nice designer stuff on the RealReal, all great solutions, but none of them really address the biggest issue, which is there are too many clothes on the planet and we don’t need any new clothes. Liz [Ricketts] at the Or Foundation, who’s in the film, says “We can check making clothes off our list of humanity’s things to do.” And it’s like, what if we just had less? Wouldn’t that be amazing? But that’s a big shift in behavior for a planet. I always feel like the power is in the consumer, and that’s something we don’t talk about.
The documentary notes that, as of its release, Brandy Melville still seems to be doing major business globally. Has its cultural cachet in the U.S. taken any kind of hit, in your view?
I mean, I noticed a few weeks ago, Lily-Rose Depp was photographed wearing some Brandy Melville. There’s cachet in it, there’s skinny girl clout in it. It’s a really dark world. Stores keep opening: I know in Australia, where I’m from originally, it’s fairly new [and] it’s really popular with young girls. So I’m hoping this will maybe put a dent into it because it doesn’t have the history that it’s had here. Right now it feels unstoppable, and the only way to have an impact is to stop buying their clothes. Wouldn’t it be great if this film goes out globally through HBO and their retail goes down, I don’t know, 10, 20, 50 percent? And the thing is, it’s all in the hands of young women. Young women have the power, so they can be creating content about this. They can be talking about it online and in person, and they can stop shopping there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
