The first bombshell in HBO’s investigative documentary Brandy Hellville is that the exclusive club for teen girls size 4 and under isn’t named after the heartless, blond She-E-O that we always imagined was behind the brand. That’s because Brandy Melville isn’t run by a woman at all. It’s owned by an extremely shady Italian nepo baby by the name of Stephan Marsan, who has managed to keep himself behind the scenes of his popular international operation — until now.
Stephan launched the company in Italy with the help of his textiles expert father, Silvio, and his translator/right-hand man Jesse, according to the doc. After launching dozens of successful stores abroad, each under individual shell corporations (must have missed that advice in my Business 101 course), Stephan ramped up the business by expanding to Southern California and the rest is some really dark history. So where is Stephen Marsan, Libertarian Ayn Rand stan, now that the shit has hit the fan? Here’s what we know so far.
What happened at Brandy Melville?
Stephan and his organization are accused of several vile discriminatory practices that have been quietly reported for years and recently put on blast by HBO’s reporting. These include implementing racist policies of segregation which forced colored employees to non-visible store positions, requesting and possessing thousands of personal photos of employees and shoppers that looked like “Brandy girls”, and sharing anti-semitic, anti-black, and generally hateful memes and propaganda in company-wide correspondences with top leadership.
Stephan’s bizarre politicization of Brandy Melville has also been heavily criticized, considering Ayn Rand’s infamous fairytale (yes I’m using that word intentionally) Atlas Shrugged is unfitting source material to use as the design “bible” for a teenage girl’s clothing store. Though the public was kept in the dark about Stephan and his bros master-minding the Gingham-filtered Tumblr playground, underage employees were all too familiar with the unsafe male presence laced into Brandy’s foundation, with at least one Brandy employee reporting a sexual assault in a New York City apartment owned by the company.
Where is Stephan now?
Stephan did a good job of lurking in the shadows at the height of Brandy’s success and is expected to continue to do so now that the company is in the legal hot seat. Unfortunately with multiple Brandy Melville lawsuits flying for copyright and wrongful termination issues, we may see more of him, maybe even behind a witness stand, soon. Though Stephan was previously able to ignore criticism from his NYC penthouse, since he remains the current CEO of Brandy Melville, it does seem the growing mountain of allegations against him could merit a response any day now.
