The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - the CREEPIEST brand loved by girls (disturbing)

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

✍🏻FREE EMAIL LIST ⁠https://tapx.it/stanzoeunlimitedBrandy Melville is a cult of girlhood. And you are in it.Footage credits: HBO Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast FashionLearn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/💜 TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited🪭 All my outfits https://www.shopltk.com/explore/zoeunlimited👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/zoeunlimited🛒 Essentials https://www.amazon.com/shop/zoeunlimited📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail]//🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro4:31 The rise: Brandy Hellville8:38 The perfect Brandy cult (3 factors)14:13 Who is the cult leader16:17 What really is brandy melville? 16:21 Copycat?17:21 "quality"18:18 uncancellable

Time for your photo, like go stand against that wall and pose so I can text it to the founder of the company you work for. In the folder was every single one of the photos that she sent over the years for this daily image. Brandy Melville was like my world. Probably my all-time favorite store. So I went to Brandy the other day. Ever, ever, ever, ever. It's all from Brady Melville. Ooh, I love it. I love it.

Did you know you were in a cult? I didn't either. Welcome to the cult of girlhood. The one that we all lived and breathed. One twisted and molded to feel so normal, so natural. One where if you look like one of them, you are one of them. You know, the girls that didn't wear it, they weren't as great as I was. Maybe they weren't as pretty, maybe there was something wrong with them.

The chic, cute, trendy insiders of girlhood. The right way to be a girl. And this girl, of course, was written by a group. of middle-aged white men. He was bald with braces. It was so funny to me that no one has any idea that this man, like in his, I don't know, maybe late 30s with like sneakers and sweatpants on. It was running the Instagram that all these teenage girls are like fanning over.

Hopefully Brandi notices me. Excuse me, do you have this in a large? If having a five-step anti-aging skincare routine is now normal, to 10-year-olds of 4 kids, it's not hard to understand how a normal Gen Z and Jen of a Girlhood could only fit into one size, better yet, with a heart-shaped tag. If I kept being healthy, like, I wouldn't be able to follow company policy and keep wearing their clothes. The reason why I liked it, I mean, I think it's just because everyone else liked it. If Girlhood ever had a dictionary, it'd be every girl on Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram,

in a Brandy Melville outfit. Every it girl from Ariana Grande, Kendall Jenner, Emma Chamberlain to every one of your favorite vloggers own at least 17 pieces from there. It's actually a problem, but I love every single hair. Who could blame them? The clothes are so cute. Unlucky for Zoe, there were no stores near her available in Canada. Major FOMO.

It's so cute. In modern girlhood, the brand of clothes you wear is not simply a fashion statement. It is the badge of status of who you are. are. It creates your identity. What do your clothes say about you? And for Brandy Melville, the tags bought it on tall, thin celebrities such as Kyah Gerber and Kendall Jenner, was the status symbol that all girls from middle school to college love to hate, but also secretly want. I'm never shopping there again like you couldn't make me, but like, god damn, the baby tea. Baby tea. Yes, baby teas are cute.

But have you ever wondered if the reason we consider them cute is largely thanks to a middle-aged white man who keeps photos of young girls' bodies, a man who created the cultish girlhood you and I lived through called Brandy Melville. The story of Brandy Melville is a story about anti-Semitism, racism, sexism. It's a story about this wider system of exploitation. I never anticipated more impatiently for a documentary. That is the expose of a brand that created the teenage girl we all wanted to be and perhaps weren't. No jokes, I marked it on my calendar and set an alarm for 9 p.m. ET last night. And boy, it did not disappoint.

The documentary mainly focused on the internal disturbing truths of the company. And I want to tie everything in there with the external implications to every single one of us who have lived through and are still living a girlhood heavily influenced by its cultish aesthetics. Fat phobia, racism, body shaming, unethical labor, disgusting predatory scandals exploiting underage teenage girls that laid the foundation of the cult-like girlhood we lived through. A girlhood created by the middle-aged white men who called it Brandy Melville. What is this? This is success. At first, it was only full body photos and then they started requesting chest and feet pictures.

I was 15 years old. I was immediately approached by one of the workers. She's like, you look so cute. Everything about it was just a dream come true, a dream come true. The rise of Brandy Hellville. If Brandy Melville had one mission, it was to define girlhood. This is what you want to look like. This is your goal. Mostly blonde, cool girl, skinny, pretty girl.

A little basic. pale white definitely young and who could have done a better job than a mysterious middle-aged man brandy melville has been a staple in my life since i was in like fifth grade brandy melvo the clothing store that only sells one size is known for its california thin white girl aesthetic but is confusingly an italian clothing and fashion accessories brand established by sylvia marsan the brand name and logo were inspired by the fictional tale of two people brandy and american girl and Melville an English man who met and fell in love. Note an English man and American girl. Somehow this cute story is not so cute when you think about how it's the fantasy of a middle age man with an underage girl, which symbolically painted the power dynamic of the exploitative relationship between countless underage teenage girls and the cult leader man we will soon talk about.

All the guy lying, cramp from Stefan. And when you go to Brandy Merville's website, the girl in this romantic story can be visualized by countless photos of the young and almost childlike bodies on their website. The not so subtle signs of the predatory, almost fetish, force behind such a soft and coquettish aesthetic. The body favored by middle-aged white men behind the scenes. As we will later learn how each store was under the surveillance of the cult leaders and buttons exist at the cash register where behind the camera,

Stefan the owner will ring the button to tell the cashier to take a photo of the pretty young girl at the cash register and offer them a job. Compiling his collection of these photos and in every one of these photos was the dream body of millions of American teen girls. But even if you're not in America, there is no way to escape this aesthetic. People are buying into not just a white tian, white t-shirt they're buying into that brandy melville lifestyle brandy melvo rose to fame during 2010 tumbler era and became one of the most popular brands for teens and young girls with nearly

a hundred stores over 15 countries and 80 cities worldwide with influential it girl icons like ariana grounday alongside other famous figures wearing brandy melville the brandy girl is seen everywhere on the street at the mall in packs on at northstrom she is the girl everyone wants to be. Not surprisingly, annual sales for Brandy Melville topped $212.5 million in 2023 up from $169.6 million in 2019. And this could not be done without the help of a calculated social media presence that use employees and shoppers known as the Brandy Girls. And now the story and its audiences are woven into one. The romantic brinket. Brandy girl came to life. Girls who wear Brandy Melville sell Brandy Melville to other girls who wear Brandy Melville who start to sell Brandy Melville.

No job, no apartment. I was like 30 pounds lighter, just like very skinny, blonde. I walked into Brandy Melville and I was like, oh my God, everyone here is so pretty. Like, I want to work here. They essentially like hired me on the spot. Were you even looking for a job? No. I'm looking for a job. If this is starting to sound somewhat like an MLM, you're not far from it. Let us now look at why Brandy Melville is truly Brandy Hellville.

What is a cult? You ask. And how do you know if you're in one? Unlike what you might think, perhaps with the eerie image of Midsummer in your head or the chilling legends of People's Temple in 1931, a cult does not necessarily need to take shape in alien-worshipping devotion or extreme religious fanaticism. In a recent book I finished,

cultish by Amanda Montel. A cult is simply a way of grouping and separation of people like us versus people not like us. For instance, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Peloton community, and Silk Cycle all exemplify cultish behaviors. In other words, not all cults are evil, but the ideology is extremely powerful

and reshape our sense of community. Enforced collective values, shut down debate, and could even coerce damaging behaviors in the name of ideology. But this was a thing, it was the Brandy Girl. So in what ways was Brandy Melville not just a cult, but an extremely successful one? First, with its one-size fits, it immediately makes the Brandy Girl an exclusive type of identity. Those who literally and figuratively fit into the childlike sizes and those who, who don't. Like I no longer had a thigh gap.

I hated my body. I hated myself. A lot of girls suffered with it. A lot of the girls there. This is something that was explicitly part of the business model. To where anything Brandy Melville tells the world that you are a skinny hit girl. There's even been a controversy around their door in Vienna that only opens to a certain extent so no overweight person can pass through. Are you the next person for the interview?

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so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already? This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now? That's a nice story. The Devil wears Prada too.

In Theat's Friday. Okay. But all this only made Brandy Melville even more popular. Like a damn block line waiting outside. Second, on top of the brandy body, it separates insiders and outsiders with a distinct face, usually with sunk his blonde girls filling the story. If you're white, you had to be in sight.

In order to create insiders, there also need to be outsiders. Rarely the people of color get hired, and if they did, they're often sent behind the registers or downstairs. Go down and you go into the stock room and you see all the other people who are working there who are not white. Quote, if she was black, if she was fat, Marzanne didn't want them in the store. Reported by Whistleblower in an interview with Insider about the company CEO. And third, the sacrificial act to commit. Hey, let me know if you'd like to work together sometime. You know, there was no email signature, there was no hi, I'm from this company.

Where are all these photos going of me and like a crop top and a little skirt? It is disturbing how much of its followers, all the young girls who want to be the face of Brandy Melville, who want to be chosen by leadership as the Brandy girls were willing to sacrifice to worship the brand. No employee ever questioned if it was weird that they had to get photos of their outfits, then close-ups of their teenage bodies taken each shift and sent to the CEO. Every teenage girl shopper found it extremely flattering. When the store employee tells them they look cute and took photos of them to send to the CEO.

And I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Everything about it was just a dream come true to me at the time. All these photos of hundreds, if not thousands of girls are kept by the man behind the the scenes who is also watching over the stores looking for the new faces and bodies for his creation of girlhood. The red button goes off and then you're supposed to take a photo and also offer them a job. And the ones with faces and bodies the men did not like will get fired. He did not like my body type and that I'm not a typical brandy girl.

You can find like 700 different reasons to fire them. Because it was just so easy to hire new ones. And the most disgusting part is how the leadership men will pick out the quote-unquote elite girls to the Brandy Melville apartment, where there were reported cases of sexual assault. But victims were too scared to report the cases to risk losing their jobs and visas. It's like a never-ending conveyor belt of young teenage girls enthusiastically lining up to be slaughtered by the mysterious men behind the scenes. but all tied up in a coquettish bowl that made it into a pretty aesthetic. Not only did everything on the surface seem normal to all teenage girls across America and the world,

it was aspirational. To fit into the elite club of girlhood was every girl's dream, and the ticket was to buy the pieces or even better work there. No one ever questioned if maintaining the body of a 12-year-old is the healthy thing to do at 16, 18, 20, No one ever questioned if sweatshop labor was used for the baby girl aesthetic. No one thought the girlhood we all accepted was written by a middle-aged man. Who is the cult leader? Unlike most fashion brands, Brandy Melville has no public CEO.

No mission statement or brand persona. Every store is owned by a different shell company. The name is owned by a Swiss company, and the company's structure is quote unquote designed to not be traceable. The CEO was identified as an Italian man named Stefan Murson, a shadowy figure with almost no internet presence and precisely two Google image results. This is the person who shaped our girlhood?

For a better idea of the masterminds who shaped the aesthetics of a generation of girlhood, the documentary shared leaked internal messages in the exact group chat called Brandy Melville Gags, where everything and anything misogynistic racist, fat, obeck was shared as a light joke. The blatant attitude of Stefan was even more clear through him forcing the shutdown of a profitable store in Toronto, just because he didn't want the quote-unquote ghetto people of color shopping there. Yet despite all, the cult leader had a cult-like following.

Well, guess what? Our sales went up like 20%. So who cares? Not only did flocks of girls want to work there at minimum wage and model for free, they were fighting to be favorites. Kind of show me what you got. To be picked by the higher-ups. And those who were picked get a sense of privilege. As one employee even said, quote,

customers look up to you. Aye, T.J. Max is just down the street. We know where we are. Oh, you know where you are. Okay, welcome to Brandi. Let me know if you need anything, Gorge. A group of minorities just came in by the genus. Keep an eye on. Mean girl vibes weren't just a myth because being a bad employee won't get you fired anyways.

These young girls weren't hired for their skills. I was even encouraged to pay them more, even though they were not good at what they did. They were hired because they looked Brandy Melville. But what really is Brandy Melville? And how is it able to be so fast in pumping out styles teenage girls worship? Easy. They simply take what young girls, girls are already wearing and liking, then remaking them.

A process called product research that they get to do for free 99. Hire-ups, they were like, we love your pants. And they're like, where did you get them? They bought the pants. They paid like $50 for express shipping. I didn't get paid for my pants that they stole. If you look on Brandy Melville's website, a lot of their shirts and tops have names of girls,

and it is by no surprise that a Jocelyn shirt is probably the direct copy of a shirt worn by a store employee called Jocelyn. I guess you could call him a creative director. They select a few of their favorite girls on luxurious trips to try clothes, let them select what they like, then begin to mass produce them. A cheap and innovative creative model that brought them quite a few lawsuits. But what about quality? Surely it is a luxurious Italian fashion brand, right?

Well, it was certainly no lie that it was quote, quote made in Italy are made in Italy they are made in Prato but it's a scouting because the, let's just the positionment of the a city in Italy that is filled with sweatshops, illegal workers and cheap materials that you use three four five times and then you throw away just that like thin little needle of a tag would like destroy a shirt the locations in the tags hide the fact that the brandy baby teas are still highly likely made by undocumented and illegal workers who are probably not much if any older than the girls wearing them and the cheap fabrics used to create the styles that

cycled through girls closets within only a few wears it is undoubtedly creating a massive waste issue the question is why do people keep buying social media may have created brandy Melville, but with its ugliness being exposed since years earlier, it seemed to also be the ultimate source to shut it down, or is it? The perhaps shocking and sad truth is no. Sales have only gone up since the exposure of Brandy Melville scandals. Where hundreds of girls may have quit or shut Brandy out of their closets, thousands more are lining up to be the new faces of Brandy to spend their parents' money on a girlhood created by an abusive and exploitative man fetishizing over young girls' bodies. The sad truth is, people have a short memory or they just don't care.

Brandy Melvo made zero apology and just shot off comments on their Instagram for a few weeks. Publicity, publicity. How did this work? Perhaps they tapped into the worst impulses of a teenage girl, the soft spot in their identity. Everyone wants to be the cool girl. And the lack of enoughness propels more young girls to be sewn into the perfect aesthetic girl dream. The dream of a racist and fat-phobic man. Stefan may have created an identity called Brandy Melvo for girls.

But girlhood does not just come in one size or have one singular identity. I've definitely been there where not in Brandy Melville but in a chie paul store in China, I was told by the associate to not even bother trying on the dress because I was too puffy. And I never felt more embarrassed and humiliated. But you know what the funny thing is? Clothes are made to suit our bodies, our identities, not the other way around. If a brand does not care to make something for you, another will.

And whether it's Brandy Melville or another aesthetic in trend right now, it's easy to forget that the ultimate purchase in power is in our hands. Our identity, our girlhood, do not need to be taught by a middle-aged white man. And Brandy Melville is just one of the many examples of fashion that we both love and hate. For the cultural impacts have already been drilled way too deep into our collective subconscious that influences our judgment of beauty. This is not to shame anyone who likes these clothes or shop at any of these places. Your stylistic choices are ultimately your decision, but it is always powerful to

be aware. Who are the people shaping your unconscious identity? That's a food for that. Hope you enjoyed this dive into Brandy Melvo. Like this video and share it to more people to be aware of how our girlhood has been tainted by the hands of the ones who may not have the best intentions. And that's why we look out for each other. See you next week.