Many young adults shop at the trendy and simple styled Brandy Melville, found in many malls all around the world..Brandy Melvilles makes over 125 million dollars annually. However, despite its popularity, I would argue that Brandy Melville discriminates, combats diversity, and strengthens unrealistic beauty standards, profiting off young individuals’ insecurities.
Brandy Melville is known for their trendy clothing; they take the latest fashion trends from social media, staff, and customers from their store. Most of the clothes are marketed as “one size fits all.” Brandy Melville actually received criticism for their marketing of “one size fits all” and changed it to “one size fits most,” seemingly trying to dilute the problem. Pants, tank tops, sweaters and more are only between sizes x-small and small. Moreover, the average waist size for a teenage girl, according to Healthline, is 32.6 inches. Brandy Melville’s pants fit between 24-25 inches.
This also brings us to the universal “beauty standard” (which is a set standard for what makes men and women “good looking”)- you need to be skinny, size 0-4; tall, but not too tall; light skin tone, with colored eyes and an hourglass body. These are unrealistic ideals for many people and many young girls and even adults feel they need to look like that to be considered “pretty.” People are not one size. They do not fit into a box. The message that Brandy Melville is sending to young teens is that there is the only way you should look, making millions of young girls and boys insecure and scared of being different.
Many fashion brands now are working to demolish the beauty standard by using models of
color, models with tooth gaps, freckles, skin conditions, disabilities, and plus size models, while Brandy is only re-enforcing an impossible beauty standard. The staff and models used at Brandy Melville do not have any racial diversity and look for solely white workers. According to, The Paw Print, a college newspaper, they interviewed a 16-year-old who worked at Brandy who said, “I was hired because they asked me in the store, but I’ve noticed that they rarely ask girls of color to work when they’re in the store.”
An interview with Brandy Melvile and USA Today, Jessy Longo, the executive director, spoke out and said, “We can satisfy almost everybody, but not everybody. The one size fits most clothing might turn off somebody if they don’t walk into the store, but if you walk in you’ll find something even if it’s a bag.’’
Brandy Melville’s intolerance of different body types, skin tones, and sizes, should not be a store that you should support or shop at.
