On one level, the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion is about the Brandy Melville brand, the messed-up social norms it relies on and perpetuates, and the teenage girls it harms. On another level, though, it’s also about fast fashion as a phenomenon—with Brandy Melville as just one example of a much bigger machine and structural reality. In exploring Brandy Melville, the film examines how fast fashion is built on racist, colonial, and exploitative practices that disproportionately affect women of color around the world.
The doc goes back and forth between the teenage girl employees of the company and the abuses they describe and Accra, Ghana, where there’s an unconscionable amount of textile waste. We learn about how it gets there, what the effects are, and what some people are trying to do about it.
In our discussion of the talk about how desire is produced and how the real cult is capitalism.
Links:
Insider piece from 2021: https://www.businessinsider.com/brandy-melville-teen-fast-fashion-racism-exploitation-hitler-marsan-2021-9
Textile waste statistics: https://theroundup.org/textile-waste-statistics/
https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/
April 2024 Vogue piece by Alyssa Hardy (interviewed in doc) on meaning/evolution/consequences of fast fashion:
https://www.vogue.com/article/what-is-fast-fashion
The Or Foundation: https://theor.org/
Remake Advocacy Group’s “5-Minute Actions”: https://remake.world/take-action/
Merinda's Cult Favorite:
D’Trespa Consignment & Vintage Boutique: https://www.dtrespa.com/
16th Cross Pearson:
https://www.16thcrosspearson.com
Mike's Cult Favorite:
@cyberexboyfriend on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cyberexboyfriend
Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at @cultfavoritepod.
Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.
Theme music produced with Udio.
