Brandy Melville is most known for its appeal to teenage girls. Their trendy, minimalist vibe has been a key figment to their popularity. On the contrary, Brandy’s sizing has become somewhat controversial for their range and policy.
Brandy Melville’s sizing
Brandy Melville’s policy permits one size for all of their clothes, which can be seen as criticizing. This sizing range excludes a group of their customers. Rather than inducing a body positive image, they enforce beauty standards and contribute to negative body images. This makes a larger impact on their audience because the majority are teenage girls. Standard states, “As a brand that holds significant influence over younger generations, its narrow perception of acceptable body sizes wrongfully harms young people’s self-esteem and body image.” This quote highlights the exclusion and induced immoral body images upon girls that America is attempting to remove permanently.
Impact of the sizing range
The impact this sizing policy has on emotions is incredibly concerning as Brandy Melville appeals to the teenage audience. Being a teen, your weight is known to fluctuate and develop. Clothing brands tend to play a role in shaping the perception of how you think of your body. CMagazine explores this issue directly, explaining that “[one-size-fits-all sizing] suggests something that could be very harmful to the people who don’t fit into that one-size-fits-all idea, especially because one-size-fits-all is realistically a size small.” This statement furthermore develops that the harm is not only revealed in limited sizing, but in emphasizing the limitation as well. Allison Fleischman, a Colonia High senior, stated, “[Brandy Melville] usually fits me very very well, just not as it does on the model. There is probably a set of people that wouldn’t fit into it well or sustain that standard,” further demonstrating it is a known fact to not be able to fit into Brandy’s sizes and even so, their clothing doesn’t fit the same as it does on Brandy’s models.
Reinforcement of their selection
Beyond their sizing range, Brandy Melville’s marketing skills reinforce the selection they uphold. They consistently promote clothing on models with a skinny, tall stature, normalizing a narrow thought of beauty. This sends the message that beauty only comes in those forms and certain bodies pertain to the store’s vision. While certain Brandy supports suggest they should be able to cater to a specific audience and aesthetic, the labeling of clothing as “one size fits most” implies they are inclusive, but fails to deliver it. This allows that other consumers of the brand feel misled, intensifying feelings of insufficiency. These feelings are revealed when they realize a brand is excluding them. The contradiction of “one size fits most” and the reality of it not, makes the sizing range more than a preference. It becomes an issue and enforces the unaccountable trait of Brandy Melville.
In closing
Ultimately, Brandy Melville’s sizing policy fits fewer people than their claim of “one size fits most” suggests. Critics from CMagazine and The Standard accentuate, the brand’s sizing is not only impractical but harmful. Especially harmful to since their audience is targeted towards a younger audience. Brandy Melville needs to learn accountability and should reshape their claims. Without this, their brand embraces less diverse sizing, and remains exclusive rather than inclusive. To a large extent, their policy staying the same symbolizes the shut out that most industries in the U.S. are pushing to change and finally resolve.
