Brandy Melville has been a growing brand over the past few years. Their clothes being fashionable, trendy, and on the cheaper price point attracts many younger girls. Teens have been obsessed with the brand and wearing these clothes. Brandy sells oversized hoodies, comfy sweatpants, cropped T-shirts, and even affordable accessories. Many teen girls are just evolving into their own personal styles so they resort to brandy as they think of it as a fashionable place. Other you tubers and girls on instagram are pictured wearing brandy and being considered a “cool girl”. However these people modeling for the brand are sizes 00-2 and also about 5’5 in height. These are sizes that less than 20% of people in America can fit into. Discouraging others and forming many issues within oneself about their body image.
For someone who has shopped at Brandy Melville, I have had my own personal experiences with the brand. I don’t hate the brand myself, but I also don’t love it. Making this argument go both ways as I explain the controversialness it seems to hold onto while I still wear their clothing. I would say I own about 20 of their pieces, ranging from shorts to tank tops. These are the clothes that I would say fit me comfortably and maybe are a little oversized on me. However I could say that most of their bottoms tend to be smaller than the tops and shorts so I don’t tend to buy them. I do love the looks and styles of most of their pants, but I wouldn’t buy them as they are not my size. I am not a size 00-2 and am 5’10 making it hard to fit into their “one size fits all”. Usually their items end up too small or short on me. I overlook this by buying their other items in the store that do fit me and avoiding the things that don’t. I don’t think I take this personally as the brand has been selling one size since the day they opened. While other girls take this personally after one brand doesn’t fit them. This causes many issues and leads into why Brandy has created a controversial topic for themselves.
Brandy Melville has a total of 133 stores open around the world and a running website. These are the 2 main places where people go to shop for this brand’s clothes. When looking at the website you can see that there are 3 main models. All of them are of smaller fits, white race, and conventionally attractive. These select models are seen wearing a range of pants, shorts, and tank tops. Just from seeing these models we can see how this brand is size exclusive, as there aren’t any bigger sized models, and they choose their models exclusively based on their physical appearances. While the year is 2024, many people promote bigger sizes. As the “Victoria Secret” model being tall, skinny, beautiful, was the standard model before, we can see how other brands have changed this perspective of the perfect model. Including bigger sized models in their ads, clothing, and even runway shows. The world has become more inclusive of including a bigger size, than just making everything a one size piece of clothing. Brandy has seen these changes happening and is still deciding to stick to their grounds and keep the brands sizing and models the same as how they first began. This makes many people mad as they love the clothing Brandy provides but it just doesn’t fit them.
This video shows 3 women who all try on the same items from Brandy. The thing is they all have different body types and each piece fits differently on each of them. They try on 2 shirts, a jacket, jeans, a skirt, and a dress. This goes to show how this “one size fits all”, actually does not fit all. They are different sizes and each item fit one of them comfortably, while the other girls felt it was too big or too small. Brandy’s clothing sizes are all different, you could buy a shirt from there and have it be too big or buy jeans and have them be too small. This messes with women’s body image about seeing these items on themselves and leave them questioning their body, if they are too small or too big. I highly recommend watching the video (linked below) to further understand where women are coming from when talking about the arrange of clothing that is labeled “one size”.
If these things are happening to many women, where the sizes are too big or small, why is Brandy Melville still a booming company? Brandy has been able to reach its target audience ever since it opened. It has been attracting younger generations of girls who want to have style while not spending too much. Many younger teen girls have been able to fit into Brandy’s limited sizes, allowing them to love shopping there. This brand has been able to have a strong marketing team, making their clothes more and more appealing to girls over the years. This attracts more customers, making them urge to fit into their pieces. I’ve also noticed going into Brandy that they have a return policy allowing the customers to get store credit or exchange the items, allowing them to make more money. Once the customer buys a product online or in store, the money goes straight to the company and cannot be given back to the customer. Brandy’s business strategies allow them to build an even stronger brand, despite the controversial opinions people have.
Website Link: https://us.brandymelville.com/
Video Link: https://youtu.be/zm_2QnTl7ug?feature=shared
No comments yet.