Brandy Melville—the fast-fashion European clothing mega-chain that targets teen girls—reportedly has a policy in place that anyone who wants to work there has to hand over a full-body photo to executives, who will reject them if they’re not deemed to be pretty, thin, or white.
The shocking allegation was reported by Insider on Tuesday morning. Luca Rotondo, a former senior vice president at the company, alleged that the discriminatory policies were led by CEO Stephan Marsan, who opened the first Brandy Melville stores in Italy in the ’90s then expanded to the U.S. in 2009. “If she was Black, if she was fat... he didn’t want them in the store,” Rotondo said.
These are the most shocking parts of the report, which Insider said was based on interviews with 32 current and ex-U.S. staff.
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Insider obtained a screenshot of a message that purportedly shows him refusing one applicant because of the way she looked. The photo, from September 2019, showed a photo of a store manager in Newport Beach, California. Writing in Italian, Marsan reportedly told Rotondo that the store was “only hiring pieces of shit” and risked going out of business. He added: “Kick her out.”
Eight employees who worked for the company from 2013 until now said an employee’s pay was often based solely on her photo—those who were more attractive were offered a higher rate. Black employees, meanwhile, were often relegated to the storeroom or quiet hours, then replaced when a white girl was hired, employees said. An unnamed former New York regional manager said the discrimination was blatant, recalling: “There was no sugarcoating it... It was, ‘She is skinny, white, blond, and pretty—let’s hire her.’”
It appears that Marsan and Brandy Melville’s top execs would frequently share jokes about Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust in a group chat titled “Brandy Melville gags.” The dictator was reportedly mentioned 24 times in 150 message screenshots reviewed by Insider, including one image that showed Marsan’s head photoshopped onto Hitler’s body—an image he allegedly created himself.
Another image is said to have shown an emaciated woman in underwear and wearing a sash that read, “Miss Auschwitz 1943.” Another reportedly showed Hitler with the Italian for “Nobel Prize for barbecue.”
Franco Sorgi, who is said to have managed a Brandy Melville store in Canada, alleged that Marsan told him that he didn’t want to see Black or overweight women wear his clothes. He allegedly said that he only wanted to sell to “good-looking rich little girls” to wear the clothes because they are “nice and delicate,” and the message screenshots reportedly show the executives making frequent racist jokes.
A photo of the Happy Days cast was reportedly posted in the chat with the caption: “There were no Black people in this show—that’s why it was called ‘Happy Days.’” Another reportedly showed a National Geographic magazine cover showing an ape next to a young Black man.
Employees favored by Marsan and his fellow execs were dubbed “special snowflakes” by store employees, and would enjoy perks like using the company credit card for shopping sprees, going on work trips to Hawaii or Italy, and staying in a huge company-owned apartment in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.
Mina Marlena, who worked in the Santa Monica store from age 17, said Marsan and other execs would come into stores and tell girls to try on outfits in front of them. Four other employees said they were led to believe they’d get paid more if they went fully topless. “Even though it was sus, everybody wanted [to be one of the favorites],” one former employee said. “You’d hear about it and be like, how do you get those privileges?”
When one 21-year-old New York store manager stayed for a night in the company’s SoHo apartment in 2015, Andrea Castagnasso, who owns some Brandy Melville stores in Italy, was also there, the manager told Insider. She said Castagnasso, who was in his thirties, took her out for dinner and drinks. The 21-year-old manager said that while out for drinks, her memory went blank. She woke up in his bed—naked, sick, and disoriented. “He told me I was very drunk and wanted it, although I do not believe I was in any way in a state to consent to this,” she said.
Insider reviewed medical records and interviewed a co-worker who corroborated the account. A doctor noted on medical records that the manager didn’t wish to press charges because “she may lose her working visa.”
A former employee who worked in stores in California and New York starting in 2013 said Marsan came in one day and told them to get rid of everything but the three smallest sizes. “From that moment on, we did not carry anything above a size 4,” the employee recalled. Almost every item in Brandy Melville stores comes in just one size, the equivalent of a small.
Marsan, a famously reclusive workaholic who has never granted an interview, did not respond to Insider’s requests for comment about the bombshell allegations raised from current and former staff.
