Brandy Melville is basically a retail cult — the go-to fast fashion brand for the types of Gen-Z women obsessed with Coachella, TikTok and Bella Hadid. But behind the cheap crop tops and mini skirts and "90s style" low-rise flares (clearly a misnomer, since the pants are a throwback to the early 2000s, duh) is an insidious, sexist, racist and literally fascist corporation run by one awful-sounding guy: Stephan Marsan, its founder, owner and CEO.
The details divulged to Insider are horrible. Publicly, Brandy Melville projects a brand image of young, thin, pretty whiteness. Its Instagram almost exclusively features models who fit that archetype, and the comments are full of angry criticism. This exclusionary image isn't anything new, really. Just picture the sort of hunky whiteness promoted by retail behemoths like Abercrombie and Hollister.
