Brandy Melville's problematic sizing has somehow escaped cancel culture

It’s Saturday afternoon, and my tween and teenage daughters are after some Brandy. It’s not the alcoholic tipple that they are hankering for, even if their fix of choice is, many parents would argue, equally bad for them.

The Brandy they desire is Brandy Melville, a fashion outlet beloved in their circle for its comfortable sweatpants, cropped T-shirts and ribbed vest tops decorated with floral sprigs. Unless you have teens and tweens in your life, it’s unlikely that the label will have crossed your radar, despite it having 97 stores worldwide. So popular is Brandy Melville among nine to 15-year-old girls that, like Madonna, no full name is required: it’s just Brandy. The celebrities who wear the brand are famous enough to need no surname: Kendall, Bella, Gigi, Taylor and Ariana. Its airy, distressed wood interiors reeking of laidback Californian cool make Brandy Melville’s stores feel welcoming to everyone.

Only they’re not. Since at least 2012, Brandy Melville has only sold its flimsy crop tops, skirts and dresses in one size – XS/S – equivalent to a UK dress size two to six, depending on the cut. And while this sizing might be perfect for your nine- or 10-year-old daughter when she first discovers the brand, it can be catastrophic for your older, taller or wider daughter, or even your petite nine year-old when her allegiance keeps her coming back to buy more Brandy, years after puberty has set in.

“Brandy was where I bought most of my clothes from the age of about 11,” remembers 16-year-old Molly. “I loved it. All my friends wore it, and it felt like belonging to a club. Girls can be really judgmental at secondary school, but I felt if I wore Brandy, I’d be safe from criticism.”

Molly’s eyes well up as she continues. “I remember being 13 and going in to buy something. Nothing fitted. None of the jeans would zip up, and the tops were so tight they looked embarrassing. My body had changed. I was mortified – in tears in the changing room. I ate nothing for the rest of the day. I felt like a big fat failure. It sounds stupid now, but at 13, you’re too young to realise the clothes should fit you, and that you shouldn’t have to change your body to fit the clothes.”

Litzi, 17, is also no longer a fan. In her tweens, the north Londoner was in awe of the brand. Just a few short years later, she looks back at her former enthusiasm with bafflement. “Why would I ever want to shop at a place like this?” she says.

Lest its impressionable fans be in any doubt over how their favourite brand requires them to look, the Brandy Melville aesthetic is reinforced in every store and on every social feed. Across their Instagram and TikTok accounts, which boast 4m followers combined, there’s barely an image that doesn’t feature a tiny midriff, while its stores display adverts of young girls with tanned limbs and blonde hair that look as though they stepped off a beach in Malibu. 

“I hate shopping there,” says Rowena, 48, whose daughter is mixed race. “I hate that a cardigan costs £32 when it would be a third of the price in H&M but most of all, I hate that my child can barely see her own image reflected in a store that she so bafflingly admires.”

Despite eating disorder charities, politicians and parents criticising the brand for its “one size fits all” policy, Brandy Melville’s only concession has been to grudgingly sell their jeans in a small and medium. Almost every other garment is still one size, and if you’re not built like a prepubescent tween, it’s unlikely to fit.

Trying to get in contact with anyone at the company to ask why Brandy Melville still refuses to stock anything above a size six is not straightforward. The website does however hold one clue to the brand’s origins: olive oil, which is incongruously sold for £15 a bottle alongside the brand’s usual fare. Although Brandy Melville was put on the map when its first US store opened in Los Angeles in 2009, the business was set up many years before – in Italy – by Silvio Marsan. Notwithstanding its American aspirations and Italian heritage, Brandy Melville is now based primarily in Switzerland. It is Silvio’s son, Stephan Marsan, who is the current chief executive of Brandy Melville.

A former executive reportedly claimed that, as of 2019, the brand’s global annual income was more than $250m (£216m). But given the company is private, with assets primarily located in a jurisdiction not known for its financial transparency, it’s difficult to estimate how much money the brand is currently making from their cult-like teenage following.

The accounts for three Brandy Melville-affiliated companies registered in the UK reveal that they were collectively charged royalties of over £1.4m last year for use of the Brandy trademark. This money is being directly sent to a Swiss-based company and is not taxed in the UK. With the CEO proving hard to reach, the next port of call was Alfonso Sarracino, director of the British operation. Perhaps he could explain the logic behind this curious corporate structure? Unfortunately when The Daily Telegraph arrived at a London address owned by Mr Sarracino, the intercom rang out. It appeared the company director was not in.

It’s in the court cases filed in Los Angeles that the most alarming claims are made about Brandy Melville. In August 2020, two men who ran its stores in Canada claimed that Stephan Marsan’s brother, Yvan, who also works for the family business, told them to hire “attractive white girls”, and shut down a store because the customers there were “too ghetto”. The pair, Franco Sorgi and Paolo Simeone, alleged that Stephan Marsan reiterated these requests. Three months prior, Luca Rotondo, a former Brandy Melville senior vice president, had also filed suit.

Mr Rotondo claimed he was asked “multiple times” by his superiors to “fire female employees based on their physical appearance”. In response, the company denied it “has ever fired an employee on account of his or her race” and robustly challenged the claims. Mr Rotondo’s case was dismissed at his request, after he was unable to obtain a visa to return to the US to pursue the case. But in June this year, Mr Sorgi and Mr Simeone won their lawsuit, with the judge ordering Brandy Melville to pay them $806k in damages and other costs.

Given the nature of the allegations levelled at Brandy Melville, it is striking that, in an era of cancel culture, the brand appears to have survived relatively unscathed; its tween and teen customers, usually so socially aware, still queuing up to buy into the brand.

With no response from Brandy Melville, its executives, or the lawyers who represent them, a Telegraph reporter went to Mr Marsan’s home in New York. But there’s an issue: a locked, three-foot high gate prevents anyone from approaching the building.

Brandy Melville has no public face, and its deliberate opacity appears to be the perfect smokescreen for a lack of accountability that few brands these days can get away with. Until this changes, the stark truth is that no other brand offers a one-stop shop to satisfy the difficult-to-dress demographic aged between nine and 15. “I’m too young to fit womenswear, and too old to want childrenswear,” summarises Lizzy, who is 12. “I know Brandy is problematic, but so is getting dressed.” For Lizzy, and thousands like her, Brandy is a phase that she’ll grow out of. Whatever her ethics, its sizing will make sure of it.     

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