Brandy Melville, a clothes store, first opened in Los Angeles fifteen years ago, and it has since grown into the standard for thin, pale girls in adolescent and teenage fashion. When some clients expressed disapproval of the small one-size-fits-all method, the business decided to keep its offerings simple and changed its labeling to “one size fits most.”
But that was the least of the documentary, “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion,” which debuted on HBO this week ( and can be streamed on Max ). The teenagers who work in the retail stores are reportedly harmful workplaces, and filmmaker Eva Orner speaks with them and other experts on the larger issues with quick fashion, which has grown to be an issue as undesired and unusable synthetic clothing accumulates.
Lakyn Carlton, a digital artist and educator of sustainable fashion based in Los Angeles, has a long history of providing information on social media. She provides insight into the clothes industry as a whole and why it’s worthwhile to reevaluate the notion of accumulating a wardrobe in favor of quality over quantity. We discussed “Brandy Hellville” and another documentaries that are worthwhile to watch if you want to become more informed about the clothing you purchase and later reject. Our talk has been made longer and more concise.
Q: The film tries to contain a ton, not all of it properly. How did you find the movie?
A: Because they don’t explain how fast fashion and Brandy Melville are related, they felt disjointed. A common mistake that many fast-paced films make is that they assume viewers now have this knowledge, in my opinion.
Rapid style is hard, and that is the primary sign of it. It’s not about the cost. It’s not even actually about the appearance or the price. A company makes new styles every week, or at least every morning, to put it simply. Even if it’s every single month, that’s a lot faster than what it was 10 years earlier. It involves producing thousands of products of each style, selling them for billion annually, and having hundreds and thousands of them.
Q: Why are organizations doing this?
A: Because they want you to return frequently. Individuals are browsing these websites every day because there is a continual turnover, and they want to have something new for you so that you are more likely to purchase. It’s on selling as much as possible, because art’s profits are very small for the most part. Even if you’re just making a buck or $2 per item, if you’re selling a million of them, that’s fine.
But they’re never making fresh designs for every element. They’re never fitting every part on a man. They’re never making a trial and seeing how it works. They are finding what is already well-known (they mention it in the Brandy Melville documentary) and copying it into 10,000 of the items that one of the retail workers was already wearing.
Q: Going up to the’ 80s or perhaps earlier, every technology has had businesses that youth coveted. This is why attire is a constant source of validation. How is Brandy Melville unique?
A: It’s the worst kind of normal growth of all that. It’s not just: If you can afford to buy this point, you’ll be nice. Then it’s: If you can meet into it, you’re great and wonderful.
It’s crazy how startlingly similar a lot of it looks to children’s garments. There are many of these decorative prints’ little spaghetti strap container tops with the little arrow in the middle, or small shorts and little dresses. Yet their clothes have a bloomer-like appearance.
Q: Oh, that’s interesting, but the movie didn’t really consider the stress of a product coming off as provocative to teenage bodies. There’s a quote in the film I want to talk about: “You can’t escape the truth, which is that there’s too much clothing”. I’m not sure if this notion is widely accepted in tradition.
A: And that is a challenge. You can show people images of the Atacama Desert ( in Chile ), where you can see that mountain of clothing from space, which is a mix of worn-out clothing and unsold clothing, but it doesn’t really make an impact. When these large piles of clothes collect water, especially in a country like Ghana, it does attract bugs and other condition companies, which is harming those who live close to these piles of clothing.
And to those who claim we can just recycle these clothes, you can’t recycle a pile of clothing that’s big enough to be seen from space. Because these businesses keep creating new products, even if there was much equipment and the drive to do it, we simply couldn’t. I think 20 years before, recycling would have been excellent. Simply put, the sheer amount of clothing we’re talking about makes it no longer practical. We reportedly produce about 70 billion clothes items annually. We can’t recycle as fast as we dump.
Q: Quick trend has changed the way individuals think about why they’re buying clothes.
A: But furthermore cultural advertising. I hear so many people say, “I can’t wear the same outfit twice”. And my question is always: Or what? (Laughs) I believe that as we move closer to further financial instability, anything that people can hold onto that makes them feel like they have some sort of status, wealth, or just a little treat in the form of six dresses they’re going to wear once becomes more difficult to let go of. Some people are shopping because they don’t have anything else to do because we have shopping apps on our phones.
Q: The picture covered much of the same surface as 2022’s” White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” on Netflix and I was thinking, what do these films add up to? On one hand, it’s nice that exposés like this exist. On the other hand, they resemble these cliched one-offs that concentrate on one particular company or another, which I find incredibly valuable.
A: I agree. So you crossed that some off your list, then what? The larger technique is still present even after you move to the next store. But what if a movie breaks down and explains how all these companies are connected to the system and people sigh and ask, “Where do I buy then?” And they advise you to forget about it, place an additional attempt on Amazon, and walk on.
However, I enjoy some movies.
There’s one called “The Machinists” (on YouTube) which follows these three women who work in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and it shows children working in these factories, it shows people getting their wages docked for no reason. I believe it does a really good job of illustrating how feminism and individual rights are both important issues in general. People don’t understand what working in those factories actually means and why they are so ripe for exploitation because the majority of the women of color are employed there.
There’s another documentary called “Udita” ( on YouTube ) which is about a factory in Dhaka as well, where a bunch of well- known brands were producing their clothes. The manufacturer had a lot of machinery and equipment, and one hundred workers died when that building collapsed. The film follows a woman who lost two of her sons when that tragedy occurred.
“The True Cost” (on Tubi) also focuses on fast fashion. A conservationist’s film “River Blue” (on Vimeo) examines the water used to make clothes and textiles and how polluted it is, which is another point that people don’t consider enough. In particular, water usage and water pollution in fashion are not nearly discussed enough.
A second documentary, “Unravel,” is available on Vimeo about the disposal of used clothing, but it can guide you the wrong way. I advise you to watch it, but keep in mind that it won’t take place on a large scale. The movie does a good job of capturing the perceptions of the garment employees. They both admire European culture and find it to be somewhat repulsive.
I believe movies that actually address the people who make our clothing about how they are forced to work and live only so we can have new styles every week and make it clear that it’s not just one company are more effective and substantial.
Q: Even what’s missing is programming that helps users create different choices. On social media, I’ve seen you suggest a edition of: “OK, if you want to modify how you spend money on clothes, I have some suggestions. Hire me, this is what I do”. Because that’s probably a hurdle for people: I’m informed, I feel bad, but I don’t know what to do next. Perhaps we need a program like “What Not to Wear” to teach people how to embrace slow fashion ideas. I believe that sometimes watching TV and movies can give you tips to work with in your own career.
A: If I angle Netflix? (Laughs) But it’s true that giving information without providing concrete instructions, which is what these documentaries are doing, is at best annoying and can make you feel like someone is scolding you. And anyone likes that.
However, I do wish people to advance. How do being more thoughtful with your purchases and the slow-fashion mindset help you, in my opinion, since have my work changed? Well, you know all these concerns you have with your clothing? What if I told you there’s a world where those don’t exist? because there are companies out there who value your ability to have excellent products that work. There’s a world where you love your wardrobe and there’s a world where you don’t feel the need to shop. That’s more the way we need to get going.
But yeah, I’d like to discover a documentary or series about a person who transitions from having a strong fashion wardrobe to adopting a more gradual fashion mindset, and therefore creates a new wardrobe from it.