A former Brandy Melville employee has lifted the lid on her “miserable” experience working at the fashionable clothing store, describing the “insane” regulations she had to follow after landing the job aged 14 .
Delaney Rinke, 22, chose to speak out against the popular fashion retailer just days after the HBO documentary, Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion, exposed its ugly underbelly, revealing “racism” and “l shocking “exploitation” that many former employees say they suffered during this period. working for the “cult of fast fashion”.
The California-based content creator opened up about how she was hired when she was just a teenager after an employee approached her while she was in the store and asked her to “take a photo” of her outfit – with the store manager and then later DMing Delaney and telling her when she could start, even though she hadn’t received any paperwork or applications from him.
In a wide-ranging interview with People, Delaney joined the large number of employees who have criticized Brandy Melville by claiming that her four years working at the retail store were filled with “crazy” daily checks of her employees. outfits, during which senior management took photos of the store. teenagers who worked there to decide if they “were pretty enough to work there.”
Delaney Rinke, 22, has opened up about her “miserable” experience at the trendy clothing store, where she started working when she was just 14.
In a wide-ranging interview with People, Delaney joined the large number of employees who have criticized Brandy Melville.
His confession comes just days after the HBO documentary, Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion, exposed the heinous underbelly of a wildly popular clothing brand.
She told the outlet that her journey with the fast fashion store began when she was just a teenager, shopping with her mother.
“They asked me to take a photo of my outfit and then asked me if I was interested in a job. My mom was shopping at the time, so she didn’t see them taking a photo, but she didn’t pay much attention to it,” she said.
In a clip posted to her TikTok account about her experience, she claimed that after the photo was taken, she was told she could “start next week” and was advised to “just follow someone on Instagram.
His manager at the time was sending him instructions via Instagram DMs. Delaney said workers never asked to see any identification before starting his job.
“I was really, really young, so I was pretty unhappy at work,” she told People.
The 22-year-old claimed her work time was mostly spent doing an “insane” number of outfit checks.
“They would say, ‘Okay, cool, everyone, let’s go out.’ We would line up and wait to take turns taking pictures of our outfits. They would take three pictures of each outfit. They would take body shots entire.
“Then they would take a close-up of your top and bottom, and then they would take a close-up of your shoes.
“The photos had to be very staged and make us look much older than we were, which was insane,” she explained.
On his social media account, Delaney noted that at the time, workers never told him who the teens’ photos were being sent to.
“They’re sending it to God knows who. They don’t tell you who, she said.
It wasn’t until the 22-year-old became the store’s visual manager that she discovered where the shots were going.
“Later, when I was a manager, I discovered that these photos were going to be distributed in the company.
“Basically the owner of the whole store would give people previews of their outfits or (decide) if they were pretty enough to work there. When people had three outfits (strikes) that didn’t like upper management, their time was over,” she said.
According to the Shouse Law Group, the legal working age in California is 14, but those under 18 must have a work permit. It is unclear whether or not Delaney had a work permit at the time she worked at Brandy Melville.
Brandy Melville was founded in the 1980s in Italy and opened its first store in the United States in 2009. It saw huge success almost immediately, becoming a teen style staple throughout the 2010s.
But while thousands of girls clamored for fashionable, chic clothes, behind the scenes, workers began to tell their stories and claim they were subject to “widespread discrimination based on race, gender and size”.
The documentary, broadcast on April 9 – lift the lid on how the brand became one of the largest clothing companies in the world, while allegedly harboring an “extremely toxic workplace culture” without the knowledge of its loyal and growing fans.
In particular, the teaser highlighted that the brand had used social media campaigns that largely revolved around “teenage girls taking photos of each other.”
Another woman claimed that Brandy Melville “only hired thin white girls” for her stores, while using people of color in her factories.
In 2020, a former Brandy Melville employee named Callie went viral on TikTok after accusing the company of being “fatphobic” and “racist” in a series of explosive videos.
“My second week on the job, someone comes in and says, ‘Hey, I want to work here,'” she recalled in one of her TikToks.
“And I’m like, ‘OK, give me your resume and let me show it to my boss.’ “And she gives me her resume and I go to the back and my boss looks at it for about half a second and she had all this amazing stuff on there and she goes, “What does she look like?
She claimed her manager asked her “what race” the woman was, and after saying she was Asian, she was told to tell the woman they “weren’t hiring.”
A slew of former employees have spoken out about the horrific racism and exploitation they faced while working for the “cult of fast fashion” in HBO’s upcoming documentary.
The documentary’s teaser highlighted that the brand had used social media campaigns that largely revolved around “teenage girls taking pictures of each other.”
Another woman claimed in the trailer that Brandy Melville “only hired thin white girls” for her stores, while using people of color in her factories.
She also alleged that an employee who was “taller than the others” had to stay behind the cash register “so no one could see her body.”
In an explosive Business Insider report a few months later, the publication claimed that if CEO Stephan Marsan “thought a girl was too heavy or unattractive, he demanded she be fired” and that if “a Brandy store Melville had too many black employees, he had them.” replaced by white women.
“If it was black, if it was big … he didn’t want it in the store,” said former senior vice president Luca Rotondo.
The post also claimed there was “a group text with Stephan and other top executives” that contained “racist, sexist and anti-Semitic jokes, including a photo in which Stephan photoshopped his face onto Adolf’s body Hitler”.
A store owner named Franco Sorgi claimed to BI that Stephan “called black people primitive” and once told him that “he didn’t want black people buying Brandy Melville clothes” because “it would harm the brand image”.
Additionally, the company has been fiercely criticized online for its “one size fits all” policy, which some say may promote unhealthy beauty standards for young girls.
DailyMail.com has requested comment.
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