After handing teenage shoppers in front of the store flyers explaining the situation, they still proceeded to pay for the company’s goods.
Following the incidents of Brandy Melville CEO’s accusations of racism, sizeism, antisemitism, and subliminal messaging through clothing, a group of students protesting the storefront handed out flyers in an exposition of the events. They stood outside the Brandy Melville flagship store located in the Soho shopping district of New York City on Saturday afternoon. The young people in line ignored the information plastered on the flyers and continued to purchase from the store as the line out the door continued to grow, despite the reports of a toxic workplace and the known racial and size preference.
“CEO Stephen Marsan created a toxic workplace where only white, thin, pretty girls were allowed to work in his stores, the Insider report claimed.”
At the beginning of September, a leaked group chat of Brandy Melville CEO’s revealed racist, antisemitic sexual, and sizeist messages between partners of the company. Including offensive memes and derogatory language, partners of the company are also facing accusations of sexual assault. The company has been accused of only hiring skinny, caucasian women to represent the brand. After years of avidly hiring their models to work inside select stores, Brandy Melville is also facing backlash from a select group of consumers concerning their “toxic workplace,” bad working conditions for their employees, and strange requests towards their appearances.
Brandy Melville, founded by Silvio Marsan, first gained popularity from supermodel relevance through social media. When viewers saw supermodels such as Kendall Jenner wearing the brand, the popularity surged and grew all over the U.S despite the brand's Italian roots. As one of the most popular teenage clothing brands the one thing that sets Brandy Melville apart from its competition is the fact that they only sell one size. The store is notorious for being “one size fits all.” Though this one size, they sell ranges only from extra-small to small. Even though in the past the brand has received backlash for this one size, their “cult following” has retained the brand and its popularity over the years.
After this latest scandal, a group of students from Marymount Manhattan college in the upper east side got together and composed a flyer of all the news stories of the brand's latest accusations and offenses from places such as Insider, the Washington Post, and the New York Post. Below is an example of one of the flyers:
In shock that the public did not respond in the way they anticipated, the students questioned what they could do to get more in touch with the Brandy Melville consumers. Since standing outside of the store exposing the CEO’s agendas did not work, students will be forced to look towards a new way of protesting the brand. The current relevance of cancel culture proves itself more present each day within each newly exposed company's seemingly dirty agendas.
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