May 14, 2024 • 41 mins
Kate Taylor’s reporting led to HBO’s new documentary Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion. She joins Bridget to discuss what Brandy Mellville’s rise says about social media, girlhood, and exploitation, and what it means for the rest of us.
Read Kate’s piece (all of her pieces are dope) https://www.businessinsider.com/brandy-melville-teen-fast-fashion-racism-exploitation-hitler-marsan-2021-9
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This isn't just about teenage girls like in stores being exploited.
It's about exploitation on every level.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Todd and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Have you ever shot at a Brandy Melvell? Okay?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
So, the Brandy Melvell look is just the right kind
of fade on a vintage jacket or a T shirt
that fits in just the right kind of way. She's
California cool, effortless. She also happens to be thin, white,
and conventionally attractive. So just who is Brandy Melvell. The
shadowy fast fashion chain was founded and run by Italian
(00:54):
CEO Stephan Marshawn, and under his direction, Brandy Melvell reached
a kind of cult status with a certain subsection of
teenage girls. Even if you've never shopped there yourself, if
you have a young woman or girl in your life,
she's probably at least heard of it. They once became
known for their one size fits most sizing, and since
HBO's new documentary Brandy mel Hell and the Cult of
(01:16):
Fast Fashion, now more of the company's toxic practices are
coming to light.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I am Kate Taylor, and I'm a senior correspondent and
Business Insider.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Kate's reporting, which you can read in the show notes,
became the basis for the HBO documentary. Her work uncovers
the darker aspects of how businesses are run and who
gets exploited to make others rich. I also happen to
be kind of a super fan of Kate's writing. Kate,
I am so excited to be talking to you today.
I feel like anytime you drop a new piece, it
(01:47):
goes straight in my group chat because I know it's
going to be the kind of piece that we're talking about.
I am awaiting the docu version of the piece like that.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You are that kind of writer for me.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Thank you so much. Amazing to hear. It's such a
I have such a cool job at Business Insider, where
it is a lot of like doing deep dives into
whatever I'm super interested in, and like it's often like
I end up writing articles where I'm like, oh, I
wish I could read an article about this, and then
my editor is like, well, sounds like you have to
report it out.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
So a lot of your reporting is taking these like big,
messy sometimes like business or corporate stories and then synthesizing
them down so your average person can really see, like
what's at stake or why they should even care even
about these stories that they might not even necessarily think
they care about or think impacts them in any capacity.
How did you get into being that person who does
(02:40):
that with these these complicated stories.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
My background is actually I was a business beat reporter
on the retail in restaurants speed so practically that meant
doing a ton of business reporting on fast food chains.
So I followed Subway really closely. I followed Starbucks really closely.
I followed McDonald's really closely, like listening in on earnings calls,
talking to executives, and.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
For all of these things.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I found it to be really fascinating how these kind
of wonky business decisions impacted the thousands and thousands of
people who ate at the chains, who worked at the chains.
So that was kind of my introduction into journalism, and
then going from there to being on our Features and
Investigations team, it kind of continued to be like, Okay,
(03:25):
how can we take these stories and make them important
to someone who doesn't think of themselves as someone who
wants to read a business publication or who wants to
kind of read something that might be a little bit
dry in how it's presented.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sometimes this is exactly what I love about Kate's work.
She finds a story that is ostensibly a story about
the way a business is being run and drills down
into what it says about us as a culture and
why it matters. Like back in twenty fifteen, when Starbucks
announced that through their Race Together initiative, they'd be encouraging
their baristas to spark tough conversations about race with customers
(04:02):
just picking up their copies, and Kate was on it.
I remember the first story I read by you with
about I think it was when you were an entrepreneur
about Starbucks they.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Wanted to like have race conversations. Do you know what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yes, that was one of like I was a couple
of years into entrepreneur then, and like that was one
of the first articles where I was like, Okay, like there's.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
More going on here, Like I want to kind of like.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Write about this conversation about this news instead of just
writing about the news, because like this is wild and
it was something that like was such a move that
you saw a lot like at that time, this was
in maybe.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I think that like from then to twenty twenty you
saw this a lot where it was businesses making announcements
that they thought that would be good pr that then
like their in store employees were like, what are you doing?
Like this is putting us in such a strange position,
like we don't have training to deal with this.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Because Kate covers business, a lot of her stories are
unfortunately about wrongdoing, already marginalized people being treated badly, and
because some of the workplaces that she covers cater to
women or young people, companies like Brandy melvell or Nickelodeon.
Kate's coverage became the docu series Quiet on the Set,
uncovering workplace abuses at the Kids Entertainment Network. There's this
(05:24):
idea that it doesn't really matter what these companies' business
practices look like, because who cares. They're just some company
for teen girls. It's an attitude that lets businesses and
the people who run them get away with behaving badly
in plain sight, but not on Kate's watch. Something I
see in You're reporting these days, is that a lot
of the focus is on these things that I think
(05:44):
impact like women or young people, these these groups of
people that I feel like are traditionally marginalized, both in
society but also in sort of business coverage. Do you
think that stories like the you know, Brandy Melville story
that you reported, or the Nickelodeon story that you reported,
do you think that these issues sometimes skirt scrutiny because
(06:06):
people assume there's nothing serious going on there because it's
about women or kids or young people their teens completely.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
And I think that especially the Brandy Melville story, that
was something where these court cases had already been filed
saying kind of these allegations that Brandy Melville was incredibly racist,
and you wouldn't have that happen at a major chain
that had, like I don't know, like a n Adida
(06:32):
is a Nike, even like a chain that serves adult women,
a J Crew. I think if those allegations had come
out about a chain that didn't specifically cater to teenage girls,
they would have already been front page news. And it
felt to me like this was overlooked because it was
a brand that was aimed at teenage girls, and it
(06:54):
was a ton of teenage girls who worked there, So yeah,
in that situation completely. I think that it's at some
level there is a disconnect where people just aren't as
aware of things, and like that talks to about who
ends up in journalism, Like it is a lot of
like older white men an older white woman who like
(07:15):
just are not as plugged into things, and like that's
how important stories don't get the investigations that are worthy.
And then I think that there is a level of
dismissal where it's like, oh, well, like does this matter?
Like fast fashion is bad, we already know that, Like
is it worth spending months looking into this specific chain?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Who is John Golf?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
In the inn ran novel At Last Shrugged, who is
John Galt is a question repeated over and over again,
and the quest to discover his identity is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
At the core of the book.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Galt is revealed to be an inventor who believes people
should be using their talents, minds, and gifts solely to
benefit themselves and no one else. It's kind of easy
to see why this book has become something of a
foundational text for libertarians, and this reference is what sent
Kate down the rabbit of investigating the retailer Brandy Melville.
So walk me through how the Brandy Melvil piece came
(08:06):
to be, and like, you're interested in your coverage in it.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
How did that start?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It came about in kind of this very roundabout way,
whereas talking to my friend who was my coworker at
the time, about how Brandy Melville had this kind of
sub brand, John Gould, and she was like, it's so
weird that they like are kind of making this weird
libertarian reference. And I was like, yeah, that is weird.
(08:31):
Like I wonder who is running this, Like who's the CEO?
Is this owned by a larger company? I started googling.
I just couldn't find the CEO, and that as a
retail reporter, I was like, this is a this is
so rare, Like you can have one location and the
CEO is giving as many.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Interviews as he can get.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
It's it's very rare for any CEO to avoid press
instead of go after press. But in this situation, you
have this super popular brand with a big social media
presence and the executive were really nowhere to be seen.
So from there I kind of started looking up business
filing started looking up court documents, and it was when
I was looking up court documents to find the CEO's
name that I came across these discrimination lawsuits where two
(09:14):
former executives said we were pretty much forced out because
we did not go along with the bias business practices,
and like, as I was reading through those lawsuits, I
really was struck by how over the top and bizarre.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
These instances of bias were.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Where these were things whereas like, this is truly mind blowing,
And I went to my editor, I was like, hey, like,
these lawsuits are really really wild, Like I think that
there's a bigger story here. I think that we should
start talking to employees former employees and asking them about
their experiences. And that was one where like almost every
interview I had, it was just another level of disturbing material.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The allegations against Brandy melvell are a horrifying mix of
surveillance and sexual control, and even more horrifying that they
all involve very young girls teenagers. Teenagers were made to
photograph themselves every day and send the photos to the
store's owners. The owners also kept a button on the
register alerting the staff when they should take a photo
of a girl who was being wrung up. Sometimes girls
(10:36):
shopping at the store would be offered a job on
the spot if the owners liked the way they looked.
Black employees or employees who did not fit a very
specific Brandy Melvell look, which is basically just white then
and conventionally attractive, were made to work in the back,
even if they had more retail experience. Young staff were
allowed to stay in company owned apartments in Manhattan, where
men who had some association with the company would also
(10:59):
be staying, unbel o to them.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
At least one young woman was sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
The lawsuits and then the claims made in them are wild.
You really demonstrate how wild some of these things that
were happening at at these stores are. Like things like
the teenage employees taking photos of their breasts and feet
to give to the adult male owner, you know, having
the button on the desk to be like, oh, get
a photo of her. The thing that you reported about
(11:26):
how if the teenage employees changed in front of the
adult male owners, they knew that that meant they could
get raises.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And if they went to the bathroom to change in
private that was a no no.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Like all of these allegations are wild, but I feel
like on its face, it's also just like a workplace
discrimination and like workplace sexual misconduct story. So like when
you were reporting this, like how did these issues play
out for me?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It kind of played out like where it goes from me,
like Okay, we have these really wild stories, like what
are the patterns you see here?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
What are the patterns that are actually illegal?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So the patterns where it's like things almost fall into
buckets where you have things that were normalized to the
employees where they were like, okay, everyone got hired based
on a photo in their Instagram and then kind of
taking that and then being like who was getting hired?
It was definitely we could see like yeah, the white,
thin girls were getting hired and paid more while Latina
(12:27):
woman black women were being put in the stock room
and being paid less, and like going from that shocking
to managers and then being like, yes, this was not
something that was like an accident or something that was
hidden at all, Like this was very explicit where they
would see someone who fit the brandy look and they'd
be like hire her, pay her this much, so that
(12:50):
was kind of how we moved from that, and then
like in each conversation, just kind of looking I have
this massive spreadsheet that had all the interviews I I
spoke with more than thirty current and former employees, and
kind of like just put like the big summary, but
then the checks like did this person experience or see
racism happening at work? Did this person feel like they
(13:12):
were sexually exploited? Like what were their other concerns about
Brandy Melville? And kind of just like tallying up how
many people said that they saw certain behaviors and certain practices.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
A lot of the people that you talked to for
the piece were probably young women and girls, right like
people who worked there.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Do you see them as whistleblowers?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I completely see them as whistleblowers. And it was not
something that was easy for a lot of them to do.
Most people want to remain anonymous. A lot of people
are really worried about what their repercussions might be. And
even like I had some of my sources email me
after the documentary came out and they were like, hey,
like I'm really like love.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
How the documentary came out.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Like I was just too afraid to go on camera
for this because I didn't want to risk my career.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I didn't want.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
These executives to kind of come after me, and I
think that for them there's still this fear that that
could happen. The director told me she kind of was like,
this was harder to get people to go on the
record for than stories I've done about refugee camps or
like war crimes. This is something that was just so
so scary for people to talk about.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
And I think the fact that we're talking about young
people it also I don't know, there's something to that
that it probably is really scary to go up against
this massive machine that has with intention, made it difficult
to go after them. That also really becomes more powerful
by being this big brand that every girl wants to
(14:41):
be part of. Of course you want to work for
Brandy Melvill, like it's the coolest job you could have.
It really takes some guts to go up against that.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yes, And like for these girls now, young women, like
it's not just your job, it's your entire identity. Like
you've built this online identity doing this. All your friends
work there. A lot of these girls got kind of
a foot in the door in the fashion industry, and
a lot of them are like doing really cool things
in fashion now where they kind of like feel And
(15:11):
I think that this is common for a lot of
young people who experience workplace discrimination or sexual harassment in
the workplace. Like you almost feel like you don't want
to say something bad because you attribute all of your
successes to the person who victimized you in some ways,
so you feel like very torn and like, yeah, I
think that that's something that's really really hard for a
(15:32):
lot of these young women to kind of grapple with, like, oh,
but like, is my success now tied to Brandy Mailville,
Like do I owe them? Not Everyone feels that way obviously,
but I think that when people are thinking about building
their career, they don't want to kind of yeah, you
don't want to piss off the extremely powerful, middle aged
(15:55):
executive who gave you your first job at age fourteen.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's so sad.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And I guess even for young people who didn't work
for Brandy Melvel but bought the clothes follow the Instagram,
maybe modeled the way that they present online because of
the Instagram.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I guess I see this in some ways.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
As a story about the power of stoking a particular
kind of like anxiety or need in young people using
social media and how that can make bad men very wealthy.
Do you see this the Rise of Brandy Melvel as
a story about the rise of like social media and
its impact on youth.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I think that it is in some ways, like if
this wasn't such a horrific place to work, Like it's
a huge success story in using social media to create
incredible buzz around a brand, and I think that part
of the way that they did that was by giving
a lot of the control over to teenagers themselves, where
like people can look at these photos, especially the ones
like in peek Tumbler era, like five ten years ago,
(16:59):
where where it's like, okay, you can tell. I think
that like teenage girls are the ones taking these photos
and it feels like photos of their friends, where people
who are potential customers see that and like it feels like, oh,
this is an exclusive friend group that I want to
get into that I want to follow along with, versus
feeling like a commercial or like a model in a catalog,
(17:21):
and it just completely transfers, like it translates so much
better to social media than I think these more traditional
kind of catalog style photo shoots do.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Say what you will about Brandy Melvill, but their instagram
is on point. The photos kind of feel like writing
around in your friend's backseat, blasting music with the windows
open during a warm summer night. They really capture something
authentic about what it was like to be a team girl,
and that's probably because the photos are taken by team girls.
Brandy Melville used teen retail staff to fill roles typically
(17:53):
filled by creative professionals social media, photography, styling, fashion and
trend research. Sometimes the higher ups would literally take the
shirt off of a staffer's back to sell a version
of it in the store now on its space. The
idea of teen girls being the creative force behind a
brand that is marketed to other teen girls makes a
lot of sense. The only problem is, despite doing the
work of creative professionals, the staff doing this work or
(18:17):
not being.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Paid like creative professionals.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
In the documentary just feels like, in a kind of way,
more exploitation, because these girls are like doing the work
of a social media manager or a creative director and like.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Not being paid for it. They're being paid.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In like vibes and like, oh, you got to be
featured on our Instagram.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Don't you feel cool? It's like, well, that's actually a
job that has compensated me in money.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
It's like, I mean, it's one of those things where
it's like oh wow, like they're really like from what
I've heard, like they were able to achieve a lot
of financial success. And it's like, yeah, obviously it's going
to cost less if you are getting a seventeen year
old to kind of pick these designs and you're paying
her under twenty dollars an hour or versus like paying
(19:01):
someone a salary who has gone to actually gone to
school for this, And yeah, it's something where like it's
by believing in the kind of ability of these teenage
girls to track trends, to like know what's cool, Like
they were able to like both have their finger on
the pulse, but also to like save a ton of
(19:22):
money and really exploit these teenage employees because like, yes,
like the photographers, the people who are kind of determining
the fashion, the people who are modeling for this should
have been paid much more than what they were paid.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, it's easy to have record process when you're not
paying people and you're just like exploiting them.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's really like and it's something that I do think,
Like thinking about Brandy Melville versus like Rookie Magazine ten
years ago, it's almost to me two sides of the
same coin, where like Rookie was a place that was
also very much run by teenage girls, like around what
teenage girls understood was cool, but that was for teenage girls,
(20:06):
Like it wasn't like there was some shady middle aged
Italian man.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Profiting off of that. And I think that Brandy.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Melville, what makes it really disturbing to me is that
this is kind of both you have this small group
of male executives who are profiting off of these teenage girls.
Kind of they're brilliance and like, but also like the
grossest part of being a teenage girl, like to feel
like there's only one way to be attractive, to feel
(20:32):
like there's only a certain image of certain body size
that is going to make you popular and make you cool.
And I think that it's almost like these really toxic
ideas about popularity in high school, like basically writ large
and like is the brand DNA for this chain?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah, And it's like they say, like that's not you
or eye gleaning that. That's like the owner explicitly saying
we want thin, white, pretty girls wearing our garments, like
like we want those are who we want shopping in
the store, that's who we want working at the store.
That's what we want On the Instagram, it's like explicit.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yes, yeah, Like I feel like now most fashion retailers,
even if there is some subtext like that's what they want,
Like no, we have executives at Brady Melville who told me, know,
this was our.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Explicit like word for word play.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
And like, we do not want people who do not
fit this image shopping at or working at the stores.
And if they do, like we want to very actively
exclude them, and if you don't, your job is basically
on the line.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
In the documentary, they show a scene where one of
the stores even has like skinny doors where you have
to sort of turn to physically enter the door, which
I had never heard before. I was like, oh my god,
they're they're very serious about who they want in these stores.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Like literally it's.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Wild and like that it was like a meme online
for a while, or it is like all these like
tiny little spaces like must be this small to like
fit into Brandy Mailville, like it's the one size thing
is so kind of well known that it's become a
meme in its own right. And like when I started
looking into this even that I was shocked that this
was how a Britain was functioning and that people were
(22:21):
okay with it.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So I haven't been a teenage girl for a very
long time, but I remember my adolescence very well. So
I think for a lot of us, like it's something
that we carry around and in some ways, I still
feel like I'm fifteen year old bridget.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Even though I'm an adult.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
And so when I was growing up, I remember that
what made you cool was to sort of stand out,
to be different, Like that was like what was cool
when I was growing up. And I wonder if social
media has kind of led to the opposite, where what's
cool it's to sort of like fit in and sort
of all look the same, all have this like very
(22:56):
sort of similar aesthetic. And I wonder if maybe Brandy
melvell was just sort of like taking advantage of that
that like right now it's cool to all have this
like California girl look for teen girls, let's really sell
that back to them in an aggressive way via social media.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think it's almost two competing urges where it's like,
I wonder, because there's been so much movement with the
next generation with Gen Z to kind of be like, Okay,
we want to have more diversity in fashion, we want
to have more sized diversity, we want more racial diversity.
But then also, like Brandy Melville is super popular, I
(23:37):
think that Brandy was able to keep an eye on
these trends while also making people kind of feel like, Okay,
you're fitting in. But it has these little flashes of
being able to be like, Okay, this is this is
special where like they along with the really California cool thing,
they'll have times where they do a lot of vintage
in inspired stuff, which I feel like vinjage is of
(24:00):
the yeah for me in high school, Like if you're
someone who has like cool vintage stuff, like, oh, you're putting.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
More time into this, like you know, you're cool.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
In a different way than like the people who are
wearing Abercrombie or Hollister. And I think the Brandy kind
of is trying to straddle both of those sides, where
it's like you have the very preppy the California, those
kinds of looks, and then on the other side you
also have oh, like this is as if you went
to a vintage store yourself, but no, it's actually just
(24:31):
been screened by a seventeen year old living in Santa
Monica who got the boss's credit card and got to
like take a day going to thrift shops.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So for folks this is actually a great question for
folks who don't know, how would you describe the Brandy
Melville style the look.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I think that the Brandy Melville look, it keeps evolving,
and that's something that they have been able to continue doing.
I think for a long time it was very California cool, casual,
like lots of oversized, and then it's evolved to be
a bit more vintage. It definitely was going through very
much like a preppy phase for a while, but they
(25:12):
have a lot of just like basics where like the
little kind of white tank tops, the short shorts.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Right now, how.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I think of their stuff as like very like a
little bit timeless, a little bit nineties, and it feels
like it feels like it's something that you can look
at and be like, oh, this is just these little
touches that even me, thinking back to when I was
in high school, I could imagine like a popular just
(25:43):
like tiny, tiny cheerleader style girl like wearing and me
being like, oh, I couldn't wear that, like I'm too big,
like I'm too awkward, like I just I couldn't pull
that off.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I feel the exact same way.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Isn't it funny how they're able to like me, I'm
in adult woman, and they're still able to signal to me,
somebody who has not been in high school for a
very long time, exactly what you just said that, like, oh,
this is what the pretty popular, blonde skinning girl wears.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You're you would never be able to pull this off.
She pulls it off like, and like they're they're able
to evoke that so well.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I know, like there weren't even cheerleaders in my high school.
I don't know why I said that. That is the same.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Like I went to an all girls Catholic school. We
didn't have cheerleaders. We all were the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And yet I know exactly what they are tapping into,
like they are very good.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yes, it's this like very delicate kind of femininity that
like feels I think to a lot of people like oh,
like I can't, I can't do that, or like oh
I want to achieve that, but like I'll never feel
like right. It was I actually, while reporting this story,
I went into a Brandy mailvill because we were with
our photographer, and I was like, Okay, we have to
(26:56):
like get photos for the article, like we don't want to,
like we wanted to kind of go into the flagship
and see if we could see some of the things
the girls talked about to like corroborate certain things to
be like okay, yes, like there's where they pushed the
button when they see girls that they want to higher,
and like I tried on the clothes and it was
just like it was a very kind of out of
(27:16):
body experience to be like, yeah, like I am kind
of like I am a straight sized woman. I kind
of like I fit into most clothes. I can find
clothes that fit me in most stores. And I was like,
there's no way that I could like go in public
wearing this.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
No, it's that one size fits most is really yeah,
it's it's it's so wild, but you're right, it's almost
like a meme at this point.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it's really really wild. It also just made
me feel like I'm thirty two. I was like, I
feel so old right now in this store.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
The only time I've ever got into a Brandy Melvella
had the exact same experience.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
And I also was like.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Watching the reading your Piece and watching the documentary, I
was like, oh, I see what that was. Now I've
only got into one and I was like, I feel
like the people working here don't.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Want to help me.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And now I'm like, oh, they probably had zero retail experience,
zero training because they were just hired from their instagram.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. It was like so many of the people who
I talked with would be like it was so frustrating.
We would like find someone who had retail experience and
be like please, can we hire her, and they'd be
like no, like she doesn't fit our image. Like I
remember talking to one former employee and she's like, we
would like we face tuned this girl in the photo
we said, because we're like, she has experience, she's good
(28:32):
with customers, and was like, we just want her, so
we're going.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
To face tune her, like so hopefully she gets hired and.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Like, yeah, imagine being like please, just like let me
hire some competent, and there's ones like eh, like I
don't know, like she's a couple of pounds too heavy.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And I mean, something that the documentary really lays out
in a fascinating way is that it's really the system
where everybody is being exploited. The employees are being exploited,
the girls buy the clothes are being exploited.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
The countries in the.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Global South were like the clothing ends up, like they're
pressured into taking these clothes once the West throws them
out because they're fast fashioned, they fall apart, are being exploited.
Do you see this as all sort of linked, like
triggering the anxieties of these young girls and then making
money on clothing sales, which in turn for there's the
exploitation of these folks in the Global South. Like it
just feels like one big system where we are all losing.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Yes completely.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And I think that that was something that in my
original investigation I didn't get into as much. But Eva Warner,
the director of the documentary, kind of I feel like
she really made it her mission to kind of take
it the next step to say like this isn't just
about this one fashion line, like this is It's like
one link in this wider system of destruction in how
(29:48):
it impacts all these people. So I think that, yeah,
I really like appreciated that Eva the director took it
there and was willing to push things to the next step.
This isn't just about teenage girls like in stores being exploited.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
It's about exploitation on every level.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
More.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
If you were on the internet like I was in
the odds, you probably remember what some people called hipster racism.
I remember that time feeling like the peak of people
(30:31):
masking racism or sexism, or fat phobia or other harmful
attitudes with memes or off colored jokes about women, Jewish people,
black people, and fat people. And that's really what I
was reminded of when I saw some of the chatter
happening between staffers and Brandy Melville higher ups in a
company group chat. I know all too well how this
(30:52):
kind of thing can be used to normalize toxic attitudes
and ideologies under the guise of it's just a joke,
don't be so sensitive something that you really flesh out with,
like screenshots that are quite disturbing in the piece are
this how these like senior staffers, like the highest level
folks would be in these company group chats, spreading anti
(31:12):
semitic and misogynistic and racist and fat phobic memes and
language in these group texts and reading those. Something about
this reminded me of being online in the twenty tens,
when like quote, hipster racism was sort of in vogue,
like like, oh, how kind of like wink wink, am
I joking kind of racism? And I remember being online
(31:33):
at that time and it was like if you were
bothered by that, you were sensitive, you didn't get the
joke whatever, When in reality, I think looking back, what
was actually going on was that a generation of younger
people was being introduced to these very dangerous ways of
thinking while masking it in like jokes and softness. And
I'm sort of reminded of like the John Galt iconography
(31:55):
within Brandy Melville stores and things like that, like do
you see this as kind of introducing young people to
a very specific social or political ideology When they're just
like shopping for genes or whatever, they might not realize
like oh, like what am I?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
What am I actually being introduced here?
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think yes to a degree.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I mean, I think it's so interesting what you said
about like growing up online with like the hipster racism,
Like this to me feels so in line with that,
like where all of these things were like, oh, it's jokes,
but it was like I also very much crew up
online in that era, and these were some of like
the more horrific images and like memes that I had
(32:38):
seen where it was just like another level of anti smotism,
another level of racism, like I mean, just really graphic
images of pornography, even where it's something you see, Oh,
like what if we took four Chan and then that
was like the company group chat with all these male executives,
(33:00):
And I think that that kind of beyond being like, oh,
this is obviously offensive, it is just shocking to see
how that can be transferred over if that is normalized
at an organization, and if this is something that is
kind of being passed on to the customer, I think
yes and no. I think honestly, the thing that feels
(33:22):
more disturbing to me is that these were people who
were marketing and making their money off of teenage girls,
and these thoughts weren't like it's not like they were
making a shirt that has like an anti Semitic joke
on it or racist joke on it. But this is
kind of how they are thinking of a lot of
their customers behind their backs, where they're kind of like
(33:45):
they're making jokes in these group chats about women that
they work with. They're kind of joking about all these
different things, and like that is it's a different kind
of disturbing than to like passing to pass that idea
through the company. It's like the subterfuge, the like too
faced nature of it is gross in a different way totally.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
And given all of this, you know, the anti semitism,
the racism, the taking pictures of young girl's feed and breast,
the allegations of sexual assault, like really dark stuff. The
thing that really I cannot even believe. When your piece
is published, it's basically crickets. They don't put out a statement,
they turn off their comments for a little while, and
(34:31):
that's basically it. And I guess thinking about this in
context like these days, I feel like particularly brands that
their customer base as young people. I think a lot
of young people really expect a level of social responsibility
from their brands that they that they engage with.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Why do you think that this was the reaction? The
reaction was like nothing, crickets.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I think that part of it is because people are like, well,
Brady Melville, we know it's controversial because of the one
size fits all thing.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
So I think that people are like, oh, there's more criticism,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Almost they've already sorted into this bucket where they're like, oh,
it's like, yeah, it's not perfect, but whatever versus. I
think that if the same allegations came out about a
company that was seen as really sustainable or socially good,
it might have.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
A different reaction.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I think that Brandy it doubles down both behind the
scenes and publicly as kind of not caring about this,
of being politically correct is like the worst thing you
can do, like that you shouldn't care about these things.
So I think that by doing that, it almost allowed
them not to have as much of a reaction when
(35:44):
this news came out. But I still like that is
something I'm still grappling with. I've talked to kind of
some teenagers since the documentary came out, and some of
them have been like, oh, do you think that this
is gonna hurt Brandy Melville, I'm like, I don't know, Like,
what do you think? You probably have a better understanding
of how the actual customer base is going to respond
than I do.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I wonder are there ways in which that like is
a response to the current climate that we're in now,
where we have all this like backlash to wokeism and
all of that, where it's like, actually, what's in vogue
right now is not caring about marginalized people and making
horrible jokes about them behind their back.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, it is, And I think that that is like
kind of purposeful, Like it's something where it's like, oh, well,
like if you don't try to support marginalized people, then
you can be criticized for it, which to me is
really like disturbing and wild and shouldn't be that way.
But it's almost by not trying at all, and by
(36:47):
making your identity not trying, you are able to already
have your kind of base of customers be people who
are not prioritizing this, and are not prioritizing about racism
or thinking about antisemitism or thinking about, oh my money
is funding something that maybe I don't personally agree with.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
And it's kind of scary to think about that being
really popular, Like that sentiment being something that you can make,
that you can vote for via your dollars, that you
can identify with via what you wear.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Like, that's just kind of disturbing to me.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
That the way that that kind of apathy can be
packaged as really cool and popular.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, and I think that even the response to the documentary,
I've seen tiktoks kind of people being like, oh, like
I don't care, Like Brandy Melville is a great deal,
so like I'm not going to be watching this, And
I mean, in my experience, there's so many really lovely
people who I spoke with who worked at Brandy Melville.
This is not me trying to say like if you've
ever shopped there, you're a bad person, or if you
ever worked there, you're a bad person. There are so
(37:54):
many people who I spoke with who were whistleblowers in this,
who work there as teenagers, who I think care a
lot about these issues and have continued to kind of
rededicate themselves to these issues. So I don't want to
be like I'm painting all of these people with the
same brush. But yeah, the response of people being like
I refuse to care about this, and you cannot make
(38:16):
me care about this has been pretty disturbing to me,
especially when these are allegations of I mean, screenshots of
incredibly racist, anti Semitic things, allegations of sexual assault. This
isn't something where it's one person said something that could
(38:36):
be perceived as offensive.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Not that that should be ignored when that happens, but
this is.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Like a investigation, Like, you don't have to trust me
and my thoughts on this. All of this is recorded
in court documents, in screen shots, in testimony from many people,
Like I understand, people don't know me, they don't have
to believe me, but this is a ton of evidence
that people kind of it feels like they are willfully
(39:03):
ignoring if they continue to shop there.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
What do you like if somebody listening is like who
cares about this? Like, what would you say to them?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I think that like, think about I would ask them
to think about what matters to them in terms of
their values, and to just think about, like does this square?
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Because I think that.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Most people, even people who want to pretty publicly be like, oh,
political correctness doesn't matter, have people in their life that
they care about, whether that's young women, whether that's people
who aren't white, like people who are Jewish, and if
that is how you truly feel and if that are
your values, then like I would look and see, like,
do I want to spend my money on a place
(39:42):
that really, very very explicitly does not want to reckon
with how it has treated people who are not thin
white women, And even in those situations like those are
often the women who ended up being put in these
really uncomfortab sexual situations and exploited in other ways.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Watch the documentary.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
You can read my original reporting and Business Insider, And
if anyone is listening to this who works for Brandy
Mellville Now wants to talk with me, feel free to
reach out. I am fascinated what the response has been
like within the company. I haven't talked to any current
employees since the documentary came out, so I'm curious to
hear how people are responding.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Now, got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
or just want to say hi, you can reach us
out Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find
transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget tod.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This isn't just about teenage girls like in stores being exploited.
It's about exploitation on every level.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Todd and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Have you ever shot at a Brandy Melvell? Okay?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
So, the Brandy Melvell look is just the right kind
of fade on a vintage jacket or a T shirt
that fits in just the right kind of way. She's
California cool, effortless. She also happens to be thin, white,
and conventionally attractive. So just who is Brandy Melvell. The
shadowy fast fashion chain was founded and run by Italian
(00:54):
CEO Stephan Marshawn, and under his direction, Brandy Melvell reached
a kind of cult status with a certain subsection of
teenage girls. Even if you've never shopped there yourself, if
you have a young woman or girl in your life,
she's probably at least heard of it. They once became
known for their one size fits most sizing, and since
HBO's new documentary Brandy mel Hell and the Cult of
(01:16):
Fast Fashion, now more of the company's toxic practices are
coming to light.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I am Kate Taylor, and I'm a senior correspondent and
Business Insider.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Kate's reporting, which you can read in the show notes,
became the basis for the HBO documentary. Her work uncovers
the darker aspects of how businesses are run and who
gets exploited to make others rich. I also happen to
be kind of a super fan of Kate's writing. Kate,
I am so excited to be talking to you today.
I feel like anytime you drop a new piece, it
(01:47):
goes straight in my group chat because I know it's
going to be the kind of piece that we're talking about.
I am awaiting the docu version of the piece like that.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You are that kind of writer for me.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Thank you so much. Amazing to hear. It's such a
I have such a cool job at Business Insider, where
it is a lot of like doing deep dives into
whatever I'm super interested in, and like it's often like
I end up writing articles where I'm like, oh, I
wish I could read an article about this, and then
my editor is like, well, sounds like you have to
report it out.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
So a lot of your reporting is taking these like big,
messy sometimes like business or corporate stories and then synthesizing
them down so your average person can really see, like
what's at stake or why they should even care even
about these stories that they might not even necessarily think
they care about or think impacts them in any capacity.
How did you get into being that person who does
(02:40):
that with these these complicated stories.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
My background is actually I was a business beat reporter
on the retail in restaurants speed so practically that meant
doing a ton of business reporting on fast food chains.
So I followed Subway really closely. I followed Starbucks really closely.
I followed McDonald's really closely, like listening in on earnings calls,
talking to executives, and.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
For all of these things.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I found it to be really fascinating how these kind
of wonky business decisions impacted the thousands and thousands of
people who ate at the chains, who worked at the chains.
So that was kind of my introduction into journalism, and
then going from there to being on our Features and
Investigations team, it kind of continued to be like, Okay,
(03:25):
how can we take these stories and make them important
to someone who doesn't think of themselves as someone who
wants to read a business publication or who wants to
kind of read something that might be a little bit
dry in how it's presented.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sometimes this is exactly what I love about Kate's work.
She finds a story that is ostensibly a story about
the way a business is being run and drills down
into what it says about us as a culture and
why it matters. Like back in twenty fifteen, when Starbucks
announced that through their Race Together initiative, they'd be encouraging
their baristas to spark tough conversations about race with customers
(04:02):
just picking up their copies, and Kate was on it.
I remember the first story I read by you with
about I think it was when you were an entrepreneur
about Starbucks they.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Wanted to like have race conversations. Do you know what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yes, that was one of like I was a couple
of years into entrepreneur then, and like that was one
of the first articles where I was like, Okay, like there's.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
More going on here, Like I want to kind of like.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Write about this conversation about this news instead of just
writing about the news, because like this is wild and
it was something that like was such a move that
you saw a lot like at that time, this was
in maybe.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I think that like from then to twenty twenty you
saw this a lot where it was businesses making announcements
that they thought that would be good pr that then
like their in store employees were like, what are you doing?
Like this is putting us in such a strange position,
like we don't have training to deal with this.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Because Kate covers business, a lot of her stories are
unfortunately about wrongdoing, already marginalized people being treated badly, and
because some of the workplaces that she covers cater to
women or young people, companies like Brandy melvell or Nickelodeon.
Kate's coverage became the docu series Quiet on the Set,
uncovering workplace abuses at the Kids Entertainment Network. There's this
(05:24):
idea that it doesn't really matter what these companies' business
practices look like, because who cares. They're just some company
for teen girls. It's an attitude that lets businesses and
the people who run them get away with behaving badly
in plain sight, but not on Kate's watch. Something I
see in You're reporting these days, is that a lot
of the focus is on these things that I think
(05:44):
impact like women or young people, these these groups of
people that I feel like are traditionally marginalized, both in
society but also in sort of business coverage. Do you
think that stories like the you know, Brandy Melville story
that you reported, or the Nickelodeon story that you reported,
do you think that these issues sometimes skirt scrutiny because
(06:06):
people assume there's nothing serious going on there because it's
about women or kids or young people their teens completely.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
And I think that especially the Brandy Melville story, that
was something where these court cases had already been filed
saying kind of these allegations that Brandy Melville was incredibly racist,
and you wouldn't have that happen at a major chain
that had, like I don't know, like a n Adida
(06:32):
is a Nike, even like a chain that serves adult women,
a J Crew. I think if those allegations had come
out about a chain that didn't specifically cater to teenage girls,
they would have already been front page news. And it
felt to me like this was overlooked because it was
a brand that was aimed at teenage girls, and it
(06:54):
was a ton of teenage girls who worked there, So yeah,
in that situation completely. I think that it's at some
level there is a disconnect where people just aren't as
aware of things, and like that talks to about who
ends up in journalism, Like it is a lot of
like older white men an older white woman who like
(07:15):
just are not as plugged into things, and like that's
how important stories don't get the investigations that are worthy.
And then I think that there is a level of
dismissal where it's like, oh, well, like does this matter?
Like fast fashion is bad, we already know that, Like
is it worth spending months looking into this specific chain?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Who is John Golf?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
In the inn ran novel At Last Shrugged, who is
John Galt is a question repeated over and over again,
and the quest to discover his identity is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
At the core of the book.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Galt is revealed to be an inventor who believes people
should be using their talents, minds, and gifts solely to
benefit themselves and no one else. It's kind of easy
to see why this book has become something of a
foundational text for libertarians, and this reference is what sent
Kate down the rabbit of investigating the retailer Brandy Melville.
So walk me through how the Brandy Melvil piece came
(08:06):
to be, and like, you're interested in your coverage in it.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
How did that start?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It came about in kind of this very roundabout way,
whereas talking to my friend who was my coworker at
the time, about how Brandy Melville had this kind of
sub brand, John Gould, and she was like, it's so
weird that they like are kind of making this weird
libertarian reference. And I was like, yeah, that is weird.
(08:31):
Like I wonder who is running this, Like who's the CEO?
Is this owned by a larger company? I started googling.
I just couldn't find the CEO, and that as a
retail reporter, I was like, this is a this is
so rare, Like you can have one location and the
CEO is giving as many.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Interviews as he can get.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
It's it's very rare for any CEO to avoid press
instead of go after press. But in this situation, you
have this super popular brand with a big social media
presence and the executive were really nowhere to be seen.
So from there I kind of started looking up business
filing started looking up court documents, and it was when
I was looking up court documents to find the CEO's
name that I came across these discrimination lawsuits where two
(09:14):
former executives said we were pretty much forced out because
we did not go along with the bias business practices,
and like, as I was reading through those lawsuits, I
really was struck by how over the top and bizarre.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
These instances of bias were.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Where these were things whereas like, this is truly mind blowing,
And I went to my editor, I was like, hey, like,
these lawsuits are really really wild, Like I think that
there's a bigger story here. I think that we should
start talking to employees former employees and asking them about
their experiences. And that was one where like almost every
interview I had, it was just another level of disturbing material.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
The allegations against Brandy melvell are a horrifying mix of
surveillance and sexual control, and even more horrifying that they
all involve very young girls teenagers. Teenagers were made to
photograph themselves every day and send the photos to the
store's owners. The owners also kept a button on the
register alerting the staff when they should take a photo
of a girl who was being wrung up. Sometimes girls
(10:36):
shopping at the store would be offered a job on
the spot if the owners liked the way they looked.
Black employees or employees who did not fit a very
specific Brandy Melvell look, which is basically just white then
and conventionally attractive, were made to work in the back,
even if they had more retail experience. Young staff were
allowed to stay in company owned apartments in Manhattan, where
men who had some association with the company would also
(10:59):
be staying, unbel o to them.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
At least one young woman was sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
The lawsuits and then the claims made in them are wild.
You really demonstrate how wild some of these things that
were happening at at these stores are. Like things like
the teenage employees taking photos of their breasts and feet
to give to the adult male owner, you know, having
the button on the desk to be like, oh, get
a photo of her. The thing that you reported about
(11:26):
how if the teenage employees changed in front of the
adult male owners, they knew that that meant they could
get raises.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And if they went to the bathroom to change in
private that was a no no.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Like all of these allegations are wild, but I feel
like on its face, it's also just like a workplace
discrimination and like workplace sexual misconduct story. So like when
you were reporting this, like how did these issues play
out for me?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It kind of played out like where it goes from me,
like Okay, we have these really wild stories, like what
are the patterns you see here?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
What are the patterns that are actually illegal?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So the patterns where it's like things almost fall into
buckets where you have things that were normalized to the
employees where they were like, okay, everyone got hired based
on a photo in their Instagram and then kind of
taking that and then being like who was getting hired?
It was definitely we could see like yeah, the white,
thin girls were getting hired and paid more while Latina
(12:27):
woman black women were being put in the stock room
and being paid less, and like going from that shocking
to managers and then being like, yes, this was not
something that was like an accident or something that was
hidden at all, Like this was very explicit where they
would see someone who fit the brandy look and they'd
be like hire her, pay her this much, so that
(12:50):
was kind of how we moved from that, and then
like in each conversation, just kind of looking I have
this massive spreadsheet that had all the interviews I I
spoke with more than thirty current and former employees, and
kind of like just put like the big summary, but
then the checks like did this person experience or see
racism happening at work? Did this person feel like they
(13:12):
were sexually exploited? Like what were their other concerns about
Brandy Melville? And kind of just like tallying up how
many people said that they saw certain behaviors and certain practices.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
A lot of the people that you talked to for
the piece were probably young women and girls, right like
people who worked there.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Do you see them as whistleblowers?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I completely see them as whistleblowers. And it was not
something that was easy for a lot of them to do.
Most people want to remain anonymous. A lot of people
are really worried about what their repercussions might be. And
even like I had some of my sources email me
after the documentary came out and they were like, hey,
like I'm really like love.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
How the documentary came out.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Like I was just too afraid to go on camera
for this because I didn't want to risk my career.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I didn't want.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
These executives to kind of come after me, and I
think that for them there's still this fear that that
could happen. The director told me she kind of was like,
this was harder to get people to go on the
record for than stories I've done about refugee camps or
like war crimes. This is something that was just so
so scary for people to talk about.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
And I think the fact that we're talking about young
people it also I don't know, there's something to that
that it probably is really scary to go up against
this massive machine that has with intention, made it difficult
to go after them. That also really becomes more powerful
by being this big brand that every girl wants to
(14:41):
be part of. Of course you want to work for
Brandy Melvill, like it's the coolest job you could have.
It really takes some guts to go up against that.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yes, And like for these girls now, young women, like
it's not just your job, it's your entire identity. Like
you've built this online identity doing this. All your friends
work there. A lot of these girls got kind of
a foot in the door in the fashion industry, and
a lot of them are like doing really cool things
in fashion now where they kind of like feel And
(15:11):
I think that this is common for a lot of
young people who experience workplace discrimination or sexual harassment in
the workplace. Like you almost feel like you don't want
to say something bad because you attribute all of your
successes to the person who victimized you in some ways,
so you feel like very torn and like, yeah, I
think that that's something that's really really hard for a
(15:32):
lot of these young women to kind of grapple with, like, oh,
but like, is my success now tied to Brandy Mailville,
Like do I owe them? Not Everyone feels that way obviously,
but I think that when people are thinking about building
their career, they don't want to kind of yeah, you
don't want to piss off the extremely powerful, middle aged
(15:55):
executive who gave you your first job at age fourteen.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's so sad.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And I guess even for young people who didn't work
for Brandy Melvel but bought the clothes follow the Instagram,
maybe modeled the way that they present online because of
the Instagram.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I guess I see this in some ways.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
As a story about the power of stoking a particular
kind of like anxiety or need in young people using
social media and how that can make bad men very wealthy.
Do you see this the Rise of Brandy Melvel as
a story about the rise of like social media and
its impact on youth.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I think that it is in some ways, like if
this wasn't such a horrific place to work, Like it's
a huge success story in using social media to create
incredible buzz around a brand, and I think that part
of the way that they did that was by giving
a lot of the control over to teenagers themselves, where
like people can look at these photos, especially the ones
like in peek Tumbler era, like five ten years ago,
(16:59):
where where it's like, okay, you can tell. I think
that like teenage girls are the ones taking these photos
and it feels like photos of their friends, where people
who are potential customers see that and like it feels like, oh,
this is an exclusive friend group that I want to
get into that I want to follow along with, versus
feeling like a commercial or like a model in a catalog,
(17:21):
and it just completely transfers, like it translates so much
better to social media than I think these more traditional
kind of catalog style photo shoots do.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Say what you will about Brandy Melvill, but their instagram
is on point. The photos kind of feel like writing
around in your friend's backseat, blasting music with the windows
open during a warm summer night. They really capture something
authentic about what it was like to be a team girl,
and that's probably because the photos are taken by team girls.
Brandy Melville used teen retail staff to fill roles typically
(17:53):
filled by creative professionals social media, photography, styling, fashion and
trend research. Sometimes the higher ups would literally take the
shirt off of a staffer's back to sell a version
of it in the store now on its space. The
idea of teen girls being the creative force behind a
brand that is marketed to other teen girls makes a
lot of sense. The only problem is, despite doing the
work of creative professionals, the staff doing this work or
(18:17):
not being.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Paid like creative professionals.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
In the documentary just feels like, in a kind of way,
more exploitation, because these girls are like doing the work
of a social media manager or a creative director and like.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Not being paid for it. They're being paid.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In like vibes and like, oh, you got to be
featured on our Instagram.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Don't you feel cool? It's like, well, that's actually a
job that has compensated me in money.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
It's like, I mean, it's one of those things where
it's like oh wow, like they're really like from what
I've heard, like they were able to achieve a lot
of financial success. And it's like, yeah, obviously it's going
to cost less if you are getting a seventeen year
old to kind of pick these designs and you're paying
her under twenty dollars an hour or versus like paying
(19:01):
someone a salary who has gone to actually gone to
school for this, And yeah, it's something where like it's
by believing in the kind of ability of these teenage
girls to track trends, to like know what's cool, Like
they were able to like both have their finger on
the pulse, but also to like save a ton of
(19:22):
money and really exploit these teenage employees because like, yes,
like the photographers, the people who are kind of determining
the fashion, the people who are modeling for this should
have been paid much more than what they were paid.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, it's easy to have record process when you're not
paying people and you're just like exploiting them.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's really like and it's something that I do think,
Like thinking about Brandy Melville versus like Rookie Magazine ten
years ago, it's almost to me two sides of the
same coin, where like Rookie was a place that was
also very much run by teenage girls, like around what
teenage girls understood was cool, but that was for teenage girls,
(20:06):
Like it wasn't like there was some shady middle aged
Italian man.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Profiting off of that. And I think that Brandy.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Melville, what makes it really disturbing to me is that
this is kind of both you have this small group
of male executives who are profiting off of these teenage girls.
Kind of they're brilliance and like, but also like the
grossest part of being a teenage girl, like to feel
like there's only one way to be attractive, to feel
(20:32):
like there's only a certain image of certain body size
that is going to make you popular and make you cool.
And I think that it's almost like these really toxic
ideas about popularity in high school, like basically writ large
and like is the brand DNA for this chain?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah, And it's like they say, like that's not you
or eye gleaning that. That's like the owner explicitly saying
we want thin, white, pretty girls wearing our garments, like
like we want those are who we want shopping in
the store, that's who we want working at the store.
That's what we want On the Instagram, it's like explicit.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yes, yeah, Like I feel like now most fashion retailers,
even if there is some subtext like that's what they want,
Like no, we have executives at Brady Melville who told me, know,
this was our.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Explicit like word for word play.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
And like, we do not want people who do not
fit this image shopping at or working at the stores.
And if they do, like we want to very actively
exclude them, and if you don't, your job is basically
on the line.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
In the documentary, they show a scene where one of
the stores even has like skinny doors where you have
to sort of turn to physically enter the door, which
I had never heard before. I was like, oh my god,
they're they're very serious about who they want in these stores.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Like literally it's.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Wild and like that it was like a meme online
for a while, or it is like all these like
tiny little spaces like must be this small to like
fit into Brandy Mailville, like it's the one size thing
is so kind of well known that it's become a
meme in its own right. And like when I started
looking into this even that I was shocked that this
was how a Britain was functioning and that people were
(22:21):
okay with it.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So I haven't been a teenage girl for a very
long time, but I remember my adolescence very well. So
I think for a lot of us, like it's something
that we carry around and in some ways, I still
feel like I'm fifteen year old bridget.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Even though I'm an adult.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
And so when I was growing up, I remember that
what made you cool was to sort of stand out,
to be different, Like that was like what was cool
when I was growing up. And I wonder if social
media has kind of led to the opposite, where what's
cool it's to sort of like fit in and sort
of all look the same, all have this like very
(22:56):
sort of similar aesthetic. And I wonder if maybe Brandy
melvell was just sort of like taking advantage of that
that like right now it's cool to all have this
like California girl look for teen girls, let's really sell
that back to them in an aggressive way via social media.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think it's almost two competing urges where it's like,
I wonder, because there's been so much movement with the
next generation with Gen Z to kind of be like, Okay,
we want to have more diversity in fashion, we want
to have more sized diversity, we want more racial diversity.
But then also, like Brandy Melville is super popular, I
(23:37):
think that Brandy was able to keep an eye on
these trends while also making people kind of feel like, Okay,
you're fitting in. But it has these little flashes of
being able to be like, Okay, this is this is
special where like they along with the really California cool thing,
they'll have times where they do a lot of vintage
in inspired stuff, which I feel like vinjage is of
(24:00):
the yeah for me in high school, Like if you're
someone who has like cool vintage stuff, like, oh, you're putting.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
More time into this, like you know, you're cool.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
In a different way than like the people who are
wearing Abercrombie or Hollister. And I think the Brandy kind
of is trying to straddle both of those sides, where
it's like you have the very preppy the California, those
kinds of looks, and then on the other side you
also have oh, like this is as if you went
to a vintage store yourself, but no, it's actually just
(24:31):
been screened by a seventeen year old living in Santa
Monica who got the boss's credit card and got to
like take a day going to thrift shops.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So for folks this is actually a great question for
folks who don't know, how would you describe the Brandy
Melville style the look.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I think that the Brandy Melville look, it keeps evolving,
and that's something that they have been able to continue doing.
I think for a long time it was very California cool, casual,
like lots of oversized, and then it's evolved to be
a bit more vintage. It definitely was going through very
much like a preppy phase for a while, but they
(25:12):
have a lot of just like basics where like the
little kind of white tank tops, the short shorts.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Right now, how.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I think of their stuff as like very like a
little bit timeless, a little bit nineties, and it feels
like it feels like it's something that you can look
at and be like, oh, this is just these little
touches that even me, thinking back to when I was
in high school, I could imagine like a popular just
(25:43):
like tiny, tiny cheerleader style girl like wearing and me
being like, oh, I couldn't wear that, like I'm too big,
like I'm too awkward, like I just I couldn't pull
that off.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I feel the exact same way.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Isn't it funny how they're able to like me, I'm
in adult woman, and they're still able to signal to me,
somebody who has not been in high school for a
very long time, exactly what you just said that, like, oh,
this is what the pretty popular, blonde skinning girl wears.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You're you would never be able to pull this off.
She pulls it off like, and like they're they're able
to evoke that so well.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I know, like there weren't even cheerleaders in my high school.
I don't know why I said that. That is the same.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Like I went to an all girls Catholic school. We
didn't have cheerleaders. We all were the same thing.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And yet I know exactly what they are tapping into,
like they are very good.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yes, it's this like very delicate kind of femininity that
like feels I think to a lot of people like oh,
like I can't, I can't do that, or like oh
I want to achieve that, but like I'll never feel
like right. It was I actually, while reporting this story,
I went into a Brandy mailvill because we were with
our photographer, and I was like, Okay, we have to
(26:56):
like get photos for the article, like we don't want to,
like we wanted to kind of go into the flagship
and see if we could see some of the things
the girls talked about to like corroborate certain things to
be like okay, yes, like there's where they pushed the
button when they see girls that they want to higher,
and like I tried on the clothes and it was
just like it was a very kind of out of
(27:16):
body experience to be like, yeah, like I am kind
of like I am a straight sized woman. I kind
of like I fit into most clothes. I can find
clothes that fit me in most stores. And I was like,
there's no way that I could like go in public
wearing this.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
No, it's that one size fits most is really yeah,
it's it's it's so wild, but you're right, it's almost
like a meme at this point.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it's really really wild. It also just made
me feel like I'm thirty two. I was like, I
feel so old right now in this store.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
The only time I've ever got into a Brandy Melvella
had the exact same experience.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
And I also was like.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Watching the reading your Piece and watching the documentary, I
was like, oh, I see what that was. Now I've
only got into one and I was like, I feel
like the people working here don't.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Want to help me.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And now I'm like, oh, they probably had zero retail experience,
zero training because they were just hired from their instagram.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. It was like so many of the people who
I talked with would be like it was so frustrating.
We would like find someone who had retail experience and
be like please, can we hire her, and they'd be
like no, like she doesn't fit our image. Like I
remember talking to one former employee and she's like, we
would like we face tuned this girl in the photo
we said, because we're like, she has experience, she's good
(28:32):
with customers, and was like, we just want her, so
we're going.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
To face tune her, like so hopefully she gets hired and.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Like, yeah, imagine being like please, just like let me
hire some competent, and there's ones like eh, like I
don't know, like she's a couple of pounds too heavy.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And I mean, something that the documentary really lays out
in a fascinating way is that it's really the system
where everybody is being exploited. The employees are being exploited,
the girls buy the clothes are being exploited.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
The countries in the.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Global South were like the clothing ends up, like they're
pressured into taking these clothes once the West throws them
out because they're fast fashioned, they fall apart, are being exploited.
Do you see this as all sort of linked, like
triggering the anxieties of these young girls and then making
money on clothing sales, which in turn for there's the
exploitation of these folks in the Global South. Like it
just feels like one big system where we are all losing.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Yes completely.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And I think that that was something that in my
original investigation I didn't get into as much. But Eva Warner,
the director of the documentary, kind of I feel like
she really made it her mission to kind of take
it the next step to say like this isn't just
about this one fashion line, like this is It's like
one link in this wider system of destruction in how
(29:48):
it impacts all these people. So I think that, yeah,
I really like appreciated that Eva the director took it
there and was willing to push things to the next step.
This isn't just about teenage girls like in stores being exploited.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
It's about exploitation on every level.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
More.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
If you were on the internet like I was in
the odds, you probably remember what some people called hipster racism.
I remember that time feeling like the peak of people
(30:31):
masking racism or sexism, or fat phobia or other harmful
attitudes with memes or off colored jokes about women, Jewish people,
black people, and fat people. And that's really what I
was reminded of when I saw some of the chatter
happening between staffers and Brandy Melville higher ups in a
company group chat. I know all too well how this
(30:52):
kind of thing can be used to normalize toxic attitudes
and ideologies under the guise of it's just a joke,
don't be so sensitive something that you really flesh out with,
like screenshots that are quite disturbing in the piece are
this how these like senior staffers, like the highest level
folks would be in these company group chats, spreading anti
(31:12):
semitic and misogynistic and racist and fat phobic memes and
language in these group texts and reading those. Something about
this reminded me of being online in the twenty tens,
when like quote, hipster racism was sort of in vogue,
like like, oh, how kind of like wink wink, am
I joking kind of racism? And I remember being online
(31:33):
at that time and it was like if you were
bothered by that, you were sensitive, you didn't get the
joke whatever, When in reality, I think looking back, what
was actually going on was that a generation of younger
people was being introduced to these very dangerous ways of
thinking while masking it in like jokes and softness. And
I'm sort of reminded of like the John Galt iconography
(31:55):
within Brandy Melville stores and things like that, like do
you see this as kind of introducing young people to
a very specific social or political ideology When they're just
like shopping for genes or whatever, they might not realize
like oh, like what am I?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
What am I actually being introduced here?
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think yes to a degree.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I mean, I think it's so interesting what you said
about like growing up online with like the hipster racism,
Like this to me feels so in line with that,
like where all of these things were like, oh, it's jokes,
but it was like I also very much crew up
online in that era, and these were some of like
the more horrific images and like memes that I had
(32:38):
seen where it was just like another level of anti smotism,
another level of racism, like I mean, just really graphic
images of pornography, even where it's something you see, Oh,
like what if we took four Chan and then that
was like the company group chat with all these male executives,
(33:00):
And I think that that kind of beyond being like, oh,
this is obviously offensive, it is just shocking to see
how that can be transferred over if that is normalized
at an organization, and if this is something that is
kind of being passed on to the customer, I think
yes and no. I think honestly, the thing that feels
(33:22):
more disturbing to me is that these were people who
were marketing and making their money off of teenage girls,
and these thoughts weren't like it's not like they were
making a shirt that has like an anti Semitic joke
on it or racist joke on it. But this is
kind of how they are thinking of a lot of
their customers behind their backs, where they're kind of like
(33:45):
they're making jokes in these group chats about women that
they work with. They're kind of joking about all these
different things, and like that is it's a different kind
of disturbing than to like passing to pass that idea
through the company. It's like the subterfuge, the like too
faced nature of it is gross in a different way totally.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
And given all of this, you know, the anti semitism,
the racism, the taking pictures of young girl's feed and breast,
the allegations of sexual assault, like really dark stuff. The
thing that really I cannot even believe. When your piece
is published, it's basically crickets. They don't put out a statement,
they turn off their comments for a little while, and
(34:31):
that's basically it. And I guess thinking about this in
context like these days, I feel like particularly brands that
their customer base as young people. I think a lot
of young people really expect a level of social responsibility
from their brands that they that they engage with.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Why do you think that this was the reaction? The
reaction was like nothing, crickets.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I think that part of it is because people are like, well,
Brady Melville, we know it's controversial because of the one
size fits all thing.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
So I think that people are like, oh, there's more criticism,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Almost they've already sorted into this bucket where they're like, oh,
it's like, yeah, it's not perfect, but whatever versus. I
think that if the same allegations came out about a
company that was seen as really sustainable or socially good,
it might have.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
A different reaction.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I think that Brandy it doubles down both behind the
scenes and publicly as kind of not caring about this,
of being politically correct is like the worst thing you
can do, like that you shouldn't care about these things.
So I think that by doing that, it almost allowed
them not to have as much of a reaction when
(35:44):
this news came out. But I still like that is
something I'm still grappling with. I've talked to kind of
some teenagers since the documentary came out, and some of
them have been like, oh, do you think that this
is gonna hurt Brandy Melville, I'm like, I don't know, Like,
what do you think? You probably have a better understanding
of how the actual customer base is going to respond
than I do.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I wonder are there ways in which that like is
a response to the current climate that we're in now,
where we have all this like backlash to wokeism and
all of that, where it's like, actually, what's in vogue
right now is not caring about marginalized people and making
horrible jokes about them behind their back.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, it is, And I think that that is like
kind of purposeful, Like it's something where it's like, oh, well,
like if you don't try to support marginalized people, then
you can be criticized for it, which to me is
really like disturbing and wild and shouldn't be that way.
But it's almost by not trying at all, and by
(36:47):
making your identity not trying, you are able to already
have your kind of base of customers be people who
are not prioritizing this, and are not prioritizing about racism
or thinking about antisemitism or thinking about, oh my money
is funding something that maybe I don't personally agree with.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
And it's kind of scary to think about that being
really popular, Like that sentiment being something that you can make,
that you can vote for via your dollars, that you
can identify with via what you wear.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Like, that's just kind of disturbing to me.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
That the way that that kind of apathy can be
packaged as really cool and popular.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, and I think that even the response to the documentary,
I've seen tiktoks kind of people being like, oh, like
I don't care, Like Brandy Melville is a great deal,
so like I'm not going to be watching this, And
I mean, in my experience, there's so many really lovely
people who I spoke with who worked at Brandy Melville.
This is not me trying to say like if you've
ever shopped there, you're a bad person, or if you
ever worked there, you're a bad person. There are so
(37:54):
many people who I spoke with who were whistleblowers in this,
who work there as teenagers, who I think care a
lot about these issues and have continued to kind of
rededicate themselves to these issues. So I don't want to
be like I'm painting all of these people with the
same brush. But yeah, the response of people being like
I refuse to care about this, and you cannot make
(38:16):
me care about this has been pretty disturbing to me,
especially when these are allegations of I mean, screenshots of
incredibly racist, anti Semitic things, allegations of sexual assault. This
isn't something where it's one person said something that could
(38:36):
be perceived as offensive.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Not that that should be ignored when that happens, but
this is.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Like a investigation, Like, you don't have to trust me
and my thoughts on this. All of this is recorded
in court documents, in screen shots, in testimony from many people,
Like I understand, people don't know me, they don't have
to believe me, but this is a ton of evidence
that people kind of it feels like they are willfully
(39:03):
ignoring if they continue to shop there.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
What do you like if somebody listening is like who
cares about this? Like, what would you say to them?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I think that like, think about I would ask them
to think about what matters to them in terms of
their values, and to just think about, like does this square?
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Because I think that.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Most people, even people who want to pretty publicly be like, oh,
political correctness doesn't matter, have people in their life that
they care about, whether that's young women, whether that's people
who aren't white, like people who are Jewish, and if
that is how you truly feel and if that are
your values, then like I would look and see, like,
do I want to spend my money on a place
(39:42):
that really, very very explicitly does not want to reckon
with how it has treated people who are not thin
white women, And even in those situations like those are
often the women who ended up being put in these
really uncomfortab sexual situations and exploited in other ways.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Watch the documentary.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
You can read my original reporting and Business Insider, And
if anyone is listening to this who works for Brandy
Mellville Now wants to talk with me, feel free to
reach out. I am fascinated what the response has been
like within the company. I haven't talked to any current
employees since the documentary came out, so I'm curious to
hear how people are responding.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Now, got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
or just want to say hi, you can reach us
out Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find
transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget tod.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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