Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion is 91 minutes of reaching and speculation over the popular clothing brand Brandy Melville. The film is directed by Oscar winning director Eva Orner. Brandy Melville is a clothing brand that specifically sells one-size clothing, and targets mainly young girls from the ages of 12-19 as a consumer base. It is well known that Brandy Melville creates a culture of exclusivity among girls who wear the brand. The documentary focuses on the negative aspects of this fast fashion brand.
The film immediately comes off as very dramatic, taking on the tone and voice of a true crime documentary, rather than an exposé on a company. The producers of this film also worked on a documentary exposing the dark side of kids television; Quiet on Set. That film also takes the more dramatic side but it is more deserving. This angle is an interesting one to take on this kind of documentary, which can be effective if implemented correctly. In this documentary, however, it has the opposite effect and leads viewers to undercredit the documentarians’ claims, as it comes across as melodramatic.
The Brandy Melville section of the documentary is under researched and there is a lack of viable evidence to show that these facts are worth turning into a full documentary, rather than an exposé of another form. While the claims in the documentary are important and necessary to be spread, at many times in the documentary it feels as though they are taking up time for the sake of making a longer film. This lack of particularly interesting evidence against Brandy Melville could be one reason for the dramatic tone, in order to gain popularity without a lot of new or shocking information. The majority of the information that the documentary used was both widely known and widely accessible to the public, thus failing to make the impact that the film attempted to.
It is undeniable that the Brandy Melville brand is corrupt. They only sell one size that is very small, which alienates many girls and women and creates more issues that people may have with body image. The brand also has struggled with issues of racism and sexism within the culture they create for the workplace. The way they build their brand and get inspiration can be seen as very creepy. They focus more on the popularity and style of their employees rather than actual credentials. The movie did a very good job on covering these issues, however they struggle to make a deeper dive into the issues with Brandy Melville leaving the viewer with information they already knew and a wasted evening.
The film did a good job on covering fast fashion as a whole and the dangers of a consumerist society. It talked about how fast fashion and microtrends perpetuated by social media and marketing leave people with a constant want to consume more. Many fast fashion companies have achieved maximum profit with minimum ethics. The documentary does illustrate this fact very well, as well as the environmental impact derived from the same origins of constant consumerism.
As far as the film elements of the documentary, the pacing was extremely slow and oftentimes repetitive. The narration was incessantly dramatic and was sometimes found by viewers to be minorly annoying. The visuals also left something to be desired and were not engaging for the audience, however it did do a good job of matching the visuals with the verbal content. The music was unmemorable.
Overall, the Brandy Helville documentary did illustrate the points that it was meant to. However, it was not engaging nor necessary to produce. It did not bring anything new to the eyes of viewers and was generally uninteresting. Therefore, we give Brandy Helville & the Cult of Fast Fashion two out of five stars.
