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["All The Things You Said"]
All the things you said, all the things you said
Running through my head, running through my head
Running through my head, running through my head
All the things you said, all the things you said
Running through my head, running through my head
All the things you said, all the things you said
Is not enough Oh, we're back.
Oh, it's crack.
Not much.
Truly like the same as just gearing up for another day of cultural criticism.
You know.
There's nothing happening. It's all the same.
There's like, yeah, people are blocking traffic more.
It's all the same stuff.
Lana looked amazing at Coachella.
She did, yeah.
I saw like a pro-Palestine protest in
in a Mexico City and then I touched down and saw a pro-Palestine protest in New
York City like the next day. The Arab Street. Like that guy talked about on
Barry Weiss's podcast. Which guy? I don't know. Some guy.
It's probably Gad Saad.
Biblical looking ass.
The Arab streets here.
Oh, do you have an ashtray?
Well, I got that new one, but should I bring it? Well, do you not want us to? No, no, that new one. Yeah where is it? Should I bring it?
Well do you not want us to? No no no I don't mind at all I should bring it. We need. Okay wait I
mean I have this one but I'll. It's a little one. Let's bust out your new ashtray. That's new. We
got a new ashtray for the listeners at home. We used to have a very small ashtray that I bought
We used to have a very small ashtray that I bought and on one of my travels to Paris that had a Mona Lisa.
I'm talking about how the ashtray used to be small.
Feel how heavy it is.
Okay.
Don't drop it though.
I won't.
I love it and I know you won't.
I'm so strong from going to the gym.
Don't drop it.
I'm so strong from going to the gym.
This is like nothing to me, dude.
Isn't it amazing though?
It's really sick.
It's so so weird.
And I don't know why I bought it.
And we can fit a lot of six. I know.
But okay, I'm trying to quit smoking.
I'm so sorry.
And I don't know if I'm going to last this episode.
But I don't smoke that much really besides the pod.
No, I know. I smoke so much and it's so bad
and eventually it's gonna really catch up.
Well, how many?
I'm not like a pack a day smoker,
but I'll probably smoke like five to 10 cigarettes a day,
which is like not good.
And if I'm going out, which like I go out reasonably a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah, I can.
If I'm stressed, if I have a deadline.
Wait, you can't, why not?
I can't smoke cigs in my apartment, I'm not supposed to.
Oh, you're not allowed, right?
But I kind of can get away with it,
but I do it very sparingly,
and that's because I'm not gonna go all the way downstairs
and smoke a cig.
But on the day of the eclipse, I was,
we never even, did we talk about the?
We didn't talk about the earthquake or the eclipse, did we?
Cause it's kind of over.
It's kind of over, yeah.
Does it feel good to Ash in an adult sized ashtray?
Yeah, really.
Not like one of our like weird little gifts.
No, the one you got me is really cute
and the other one's not even a fucking ashtray,
it's like a piece of a incense burner.
Yeah, so we're making moves.
So I guess you could use anything for an ashtray.
Some hater on the internet was like,
a solo cup and some spit will do.
Fuck you, don't counter signal me.
Not no, but ideally, yeah, something not.
This is a great ashtray.
I love it.
It's amazing.
You can rust your cigarette on the lip.
Yeah.
Good investment.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, really.
You're investing in our business.
I know.
And you quit, you got an amazing ashtray
and you quit smoking.
I know, I know.
I'm living large.
I'm really desperate.
But it's also like a good piece to have
for like a talented Mr. Ripley style murder.
Yeah, you could hit someone with that, exactly.
It's good to have a blunt object around.
I'm fantasizing about hitting an intruder in the head
with my new crystal ashtray,
but it's gonna be the other way around.
Yeah, I don't know.
I could see you handling it.
Yeah, in a moment of retard strength.
I did scissor kick that one Mexican guy who tried to rape me
back when I was an 18-year-old secretary.
Yeah.
So that was cool.
Your Dr. Melfi moment.
Holy shit. So Lana at Coachella.
I didn't watch it because I don't, you know,
it wouldn't have been the same.
I saw the video of her spinning around on the pole.
Yeah. And I saw like a clip of her coming in on the back of the guy's bike,
like that sort of thing.
I think experiences like that sort of thing. I think
experiences like that are better
Experienced when you're actually there. Yeah, we are to like play it back. We didn't make it to Coachella
But the images are
Sparkling glittering glittering even there
And I don't think she's on Ozempic.
I mean, were people saying she was on Ozempic? Some people were.
Yeah, there was a lot of discourse, yeah,
about her weight loss.
Yeah, that was dehumanizing.
I love Lana's music.
I hate Lana memes.
They make me sick.
They make me want to die.
It's like, who cares if she's fat or thin?
She's like the best musical artist that we have right now.
She could like Marlon Brando, like Island of Dr. Moreau it out.
She go full Elvis Presley and it wouldn't matter.
Well, what I love about Lana is she really loves her fans.
Her fans are gay men and girls.
So she's very, you know, heavy as the crown, you know,
she's gonna get me.
Heavy.
So she keeps them guessing by yo-yo dieting.
It just, she looks like she's, yeah, she looks gorgeous.
Yeah, she looks really good.
She's glowing.
Though, can I say something without everyone getting mad?
Yeah.
I mean, this is a compliment, truly.
She has the worst style ever.
She dresses like a figure skater from the 90s.
Well, she's doing a lot of culture jamming.
She's doing like Hollywood starlet and like Americana.
And you know.
But I mean it as a compliment it's like
a nice thing about her that she's not like overly like precious or finicky
about how she appeared yeah she's not like she's not like she's not like she's
not like Bjork shit where she's like trying to be avant-garde you know she's
trying to look pretty Janelle Monae oh people were mad that Rihanna did the sexy nun thing. Oh for
interview mag? Really? Isn't that insane? We're like people pretend. Yeah exactly
people have been doing this. It's so disingenuous. First of all because
she's not making fun of Christians. She's not really making fun of anything. She's not even she's it's Catholicism
So none of y'all are Christians. You're a bunch of you're also being sinister homosexuals
But the nun is a specifically the sexualized nun as we know it is specifically like a Catholic thing everything is like because
This is like a Catholic schoolgirl. It's also a trope or an archetype
of art throughout history. What are you talking about? That they've been doing for so long.
And it is disingenuous also of Catholics to pretend that it's not sexy. Yeah, when they're,
you know, that their whole religion is based on this kind of like tension of like chastity and
desire and like ecstatic experiences of like, you know.
Yeah, like the tacit unsaid thing is that people
are attracted to the religion in part
because it's kind of sexy and horny.
Yeah.
And like riddled with frisson and repression.
So I don't believe anyone when they're like scandalized
by like, just like retards online.
I can't believe that.
Just back on the ex.
I actually thought that Rihanna photo shoot
was really cool and good and had kind of like a Weimar-esque
quality to it, but was totally like uncontroversial
and bog standard in the thing.
Yeah, I found it like.
I did not even think about it outside of like.
Not me neither.
Yeah.
Nice. Yeah, me too too i was like oh cool
kind of a miss 45 thing like nunsploitation was a whole genre of is this like what lindy man means
by stuck culture yeah truly or literally just like it's a graveyard out there. Retreading the same old like, tipper gore
like cultural debates and culture wars. But this is, you
know, right wingers were mad at that video of Tupac as a high
school senior because he was a theater kid and blatantly
homosexual. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, I know. You didn't know that Boop was gay?
He's a performer.
Okay.
Do you understand?
60 to 75% of rappers are theater kids
and also Down Low Brothers.
They have also a long history of coming from magnet programs,
gifted programs, into doing gangster rap or whatever,
narrativizing their experience on the street,
which didn't happen.
They're poets.
They're the ones that got away.
Exactly, they broke through.
They became rappers because they didn the ones that got away. Exactly. They broke through.
They became rappers because they didn't get incarcerated or killed.
Yeah, or jumped in, whatever.
People were bringing up random outlier rappers to me who really were thugs or whatever, 50
cent or push a T. I was like, was like yeah okay and what's your point?
Yeah I mean I don't even know obviously school break you he's he's fat that's cool
I mean Gucci Mane went to jail. Yeah I mean a lot of rappers do go to jail I guess
A lot of rappers do go to jail, I guess.
No comment. But yeah, there's a lot of weird.
I thought the earthquake in the eclipse was supposed to dislodge old and stuck energies
and bring in a new era, but they really have.
No, the feedback is still...
I mean, we're going to talk about the Brandy Dog, Brandy Hellville, which was an episode of this very podcast that we recorded.
For real, it was really called that.
It was called Brandy Hellville.
See, I have such a wet brain. I don't even remember that. But I guess you weren't kidding when you said that they stole it from us. I wouldn't be surprised though.
On that episode, we discussed the Business Insider piece.
Right. Which like the documentary feels entirely based on.
It's like they made a documentary out of an article.
They did.
And there still is no, like I kept being like,
okay, what's the smoking gun here?
Like why did Brandi do wrong?
Yeah, I don't know.
And like they can't say,
they just kind of like described what it is.
And also at the very first Red Scare live Yeah, you might recall, I wore head to toe
walked out because we were a racist. No, that I don't count that as the first live show.
Um, shout out to Stephanie LaCava. It's her birthday today that when this episode comes out a week later,
it won't matter. Right. But anyway. Was she there? She organized it.
No, babe.
You gotta edit this out.
That was Fiona Duncan.
Fuck, okay.
Cause remember then Fiona Duncan said
she wasn't my friend no more.
Cause it was racist.
Wait, why do I have to edit that out?
I mean. No one even cares.
Cause you got Stephanie LaCava and Fiona Duncan mixed up.
Which might hurt Stephanie's feelings.
No, no, I know.
Was she there?
She read.
They're both redheads. No, no, I could I, no. Was she there? She read. They're both redheads.
No, no, I could never get Stephanie LaCabba
and Fiona Duncan confused.
Okay.
She was a reader, for sure.
See, I see now I feel bad
because I don't remember that night.
Yeah, that's all the more.
Well, because it's so traumatized.
We were so traumatized.
Because Fiona Duncan said she wasn't
going to be my friend anymore.
Yeah.
Because we've made some like,
we're marked on some celeb looks at the Met Gala
in a racially insensitive way.
And we weren't even that racist.
And not even a little.
Not at all.
We didn't even use phrases like down low brother back then.
In hindsight, we were so good, you know.
But they punish us.
We just get punished for it.
But no, at the like, it wasn't even at Bell House,
it was at some other venue.
Early, early pod.
I wore head to toe Brandy,
because I found out about Brandy when I moved to New York.
Really?
Because I always lived in East LA and shit.
I wasn't in Santa Monica.
I wasn't like, and I don't, like American Apparel was just a bigger part of my consciousness around then.
And I just, yeah. And then when I moved to New York, I wandered into a Brandy Melville and I was like this clearly some kind of libertarian operation.
I was like someone should I would you know I can't do it. I'm not an investigative journalist.
But like something's going on at Brandy but I'm intrigued. I'm not mad at it.
Yeah. I mean the dead giveaway was like all the t-shirts and jeans branded John Gall. Which, honestly, it's a genius business move
to just foist your libertarian ethos
down the throats of retarded teenage girls
who've never read a book in their lives.
And then it takes them fat, miserable,
investigative journalists to get to the bottom of things.
Sorry, we don't do that on the pod anymore.
Anyway, but yeah, it felt like-
It is, it's worth noting.
What?
Because the thing is, yes, Brandy is one size,
famously panders to sexually active teens
with lithe bodies, you know?
And the little baby tees and like, but, but no, don't get mad at me.
The shirts are fucking stretchy.
And they're kind of large.
Once and they do have bigger t-shirts.
They do boyfriend fit stuff.
Like it's not like one size fits all is one size for all.
One size fits most is for all intents and purposes, a medium.
It's not purposes a medium.
It's not even a small.
The shirts get pretty tiny at Brandy,
but once again, they still fit.
It's just that they happen to fit best on
like thinner girls.
But if you have big tits,
like you're still looking pretty cute in a Brandy t-shirt.
Not the way I do it.
The woman selling empanadas out of a double bag.
But no, I mean, also like how much of it is
a exclusionary marketing strategy
and how much of it is also just like a cost cutting device because you literally don't have to manufacture different sizes.
I mean it's an amazing brand.
Yeah that like can't be canceled.
They say after the business insider piece expose they came out that they basically were not affected by it at all.
Didn't even issue an apology.
There's nothing to cancel them on.
They haven't technically done anything wrong either in terms of their branding,
being Italian, Italian is not a crime.
Or their marketing, or their manufacturing.
But yeah, the documentary itself was really weird. being Italian is not a crime.
But yeah, the documentary itself was really weird. First of all, it feels like it's two, three, four years
too late, and then it felt like I said,
totally based on that one article.
Yeah, with that main woman who wrote it being the...
Like the protagonist.
Yeah.
It's the story of a heroic man who triumphed over
dumb and vicious cunts.
Kate Taylor.
Oh, I don't even know.
I wrote it down.
But yeah, Brandy, no one gives a shit.
No one gives a shit because Brandy has been able,
through their brilliant branding strategies,
to like cultivate so much
mimetic desire. They say that they like affirm this over and over in the first
person of the documentary. All the girls are like, I liked it because everyone
else liked it. And like it signified something to wear it.
It's like other girls who didn't have the star necklace. And I thought that
there must be something horribly wrong.
But that's the kind of thing that you just cannot police. You can't like, there's no amount of like woke nagging.
That's gonna like take that away from teens
like or 30 something year old women such as ourselves.
Like it's just the brand's too strong
and the desire for it is too real.
Right. What exactly as I watched it, it's an hour and the desire for it is too real. Right.
What exactly, as I watched it,
it's an hour and a half documentary.
It felt like it was three hours long.
And I was trying, I was like you,
waiting for the smoking gun.
Yeah.
And it's like, there's no story.
Okay, so they were like,
they were shitposting in a group chat.
Stefan Morrison.
The memes were not even that edgy.
They were kind of edgy, but they weren't like that funny.
The Adolf Hitler European tour shirt was good.
The H&M.
Happy days was good.
Some were just like in poor taste and kind of vulgar, but they're Italian.
But they're Italian and juvenile.
Yeah.
There was like maybe one random rape that occurred in the company apartment that they
kept in SoHo.
But like if there was a real rape, they would expect more.
It's like Donald Trump.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
If anything was going to take them down to be something like that.
And yeah, it seems like this one random story of rape, which is not really gaining any traction.
It was also, it's all, yeah.
Aside from that, they're not really guilty of anything.
Other fast fashion retailers are, aren't guilty of like, you can make the same indictments
of like Zara, Mango, H&M, whatever.
She and well, I weird aside about Ghana. They kept returning to,
yeah, this kind of idea of fast fashion is contributing to like... Global exploitation,
black bodies, and the waste crisis, climate change, and yeah. But the thing I actually,
I don't have any evidence, but I think that Brandy, they really make it seem like these
people in Ghana are carrying around old Brandy clothes.
No, yeah, but they don't.
It's such a tenuous connection.
There is no connection.
Completely.
And Brandy actually, I think, has higher resale value than things like Zara because they have a cult following, because they kind of do the same
thing in variations that then like there is there's a brandy Melville subreddit where
girls are like post like coveting specific items like there's a whole depop secondary
marketplace for it.
It's like the materials themselves are just like less harmful and toxic because it's all
like caught and they're not sometimes with like polyester blend but it's not like whatever the fuck they're selling again at like Zorro and they're not poorly made the way
that the documentary tries to make it seem it's like they i have i've had brandy shirts for years
oh yeah i have the same ones that i've had for like you know and they are holding up yeah they kind of like
some of the panties like stretch out a little fast. Yeah. But yeah, those I guess are kind of disposable,
but underwear isn't a thing that is fast
that you can address with your fast fashion activism anyway.
Brandy is not even quite fast fashion
in the traditional sense,
because if you go into like your average brandy store,
they don't really move the product that quickly.
It's like the same styles being sold over and over again.
Exactly. They're not following trends and like actually like filling the trend based on stealing
trends from young girls. All of that too is like I was like nothing is wrong with what they're doing.
They're photographing their customers and employees and like tapping into what their desires are and
then meeting those needs. Yeah and it's like mutually flattering and beneficial.
And nobody gets harmed.
I got my picture taken in a brand new one.
That's right.
I was dressed like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.
And they liked, they liked, what?
But okay, teenage girls are not like exploited
or endangered workers.
They usually have some time on their hands. They're like going
to school, they don't need a job, they're just chilling. It's okay to like exploit them for their
like, uh, they're having fashion. They're obviously having fun and like youthful beauty. It's not the
worst thing at the job. Yeah. At towards the end, like I think it's probably the, the insider woman
she's where she's like, they took a workplace,
something that could have been a community
and they made it into this thing
that gave girls eating these blah, blah, blah.
Like all this fake shit.
It literally was a community.
Fake.
What else?
Yeah, but there's really no connection
between like any of these threads.
It's just like these random vague impressions
of wrongdoing, like driven by like the fashionable grievances of these threads. It's just like these random vague impressions of wrongdoing, like driven by like
the fashionable grievances of the day.
It's like racism, sexism, labor exploitation.
Anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism, whatever, ecological violence
and climate change.
Random shit, most like 75% of which does not apply to
and has nothing to do with Brandy. it's literally like the most woman documentary ever like I'm like
unconnected arbitrary grievances to try to weave together a picture of again
like oppression and wrongdoing that literally doesn't exist I think Dan
Alegretto said this like a doc the new documentary format is just like women
complaining it's just like we have some women who have like the Soho apartment rape,
the group chat, Hitler memes, uh,
fast fashion exploitation of black bodies, outsource production, um,
get me personally unfollowed on Instagram, eating disorders.
Yeah. Like the promotion of eating disorders.
But then it emerges that what it's really all about
is that they have this one size fits all
or fits most thing going with their clothes.
And then also an unofficial policy of hiring
and firing people based on their looks, which is okay.
Or they're probably fired for being a communist.
Yeah, I love that.
She's going to destroy all our stores.
That's my favorite part.
Yeah.
Purging political dissidents.
It's like, it's not fair, it's not friendly, but like, there's nothing wrong
about starting a successful brand with a specific vision in mind.
Immigrant success story.
I love when they're talking about the Stevens libertarianism, his politics,
and the Italian guy's like,
these little girls do nothing all day.
They talk about Bernie Sanders,
this communist Bernie Sanders.
These girls, they don't know they're rich.
They're from rich families.
Why are they talking?
I love how he's like,
how can you be from a elite well-to-do family
and still vote for that communist Bernie Sanders?
And he's like, honestly,
it was the most earnest
and genuine thing anyone said in that whole documentary.
Like his true incredulousness at how American libtards
could fall for Bernie Sanders.
This is the problem with this country.
Because in Italy, people of that ilk
do everything they can to like maintain like their elite status through
selective breeding. I love that he's like so innocent and pure. All of this at the end of
the day comes down to sailor's law of female journalism. Go on.
Which I have quoted here for your benefit.
The most heartfelt articles by female journalists
tend to be demands that social values be overturned
in order that come the revolution,
the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking.
Like I feel like all the Africans and rape
is just window dressing for the fact that
they excluded me personally from the Brandy Melville store.
Like that's all it comes down to in the guise of like helping saving vulnerable teenage
girls who are being exploited by these racist and sexist Italian perverts who are also exploiting
poor Africans. being exploited by these racist and sexist Italian perverts who are also exploiting. Well, that's why it's worth noting that Kate Taylor is not the brandy demographic.
I would have taken it much more seriously if a thinner woman was, you know.
Right. And it's, and it noticed that none of the girls they interview who are all-
How you gonna hate from outside the club? You can't even get in, okay? You can't even fit in.
No, yeah, like the baby tee is not for you sis. Sorry.
Look, I remember going and seeing Brandy maybe 10, 12 years ago and the girls who worked there were like shockingly pretty. Like they were like Olivia Hussey in Romeo and Juliet,
like that level pretty, like young Nastasikinsky and also so like dumb and unaware of their power
in a way even though they could sense that they had something and that's like a beautiful,
wonderful environment to create, curate, Like it's not for everyone.
It doesn't, and not everything has to be for everyone.
Not everything has to be inclusive and diverse.
Like with all due respect, there are plenty of brands
for like brown girls and fat girls
and all sorts of other different girls.
Like you don't have to shoehorn diversity
and inclusion into every single brand.
And arguably a brand only makes its name on the
strength of its exclusivity and becomes literally nothing when it appeals to everyone. Exactly.
So and it's designed to appeal through their whole like product research mechanism.
Right.
It appeals by design to a very insular group of people.
Cause literally it's like when you're shopping,
you're shopping at Brandy.
I'm shopping.
30 year old women with eating disorders
who wish they could be 19.
Exactly.
Who wanna wear like comfy cozy.
Well, like I mean, all my gym clothes are from Brandy.
Yeah, mine too. And all my free bleeding shorts. I mean all my gym clothes are from Brandy yeah mine too and all my
free-bleeding shorts I mean yeah where's the feminist perspective that I actually free bleed
into a lot of that I need the disposable garments because I'm menstruating into them
uh fuck I forgot what I was gonna say. Something about diversity and inclusion, blah, blah, blah.
Demographics, blah, blah.
But okay, if you're this investigative journalist girl,
there's never been a more loathsome term
than investigative journalist.
You look around the landscape,
they mention it themselves in the documentary.
Recently, there's been an explosion
of like different body types and different ethnic groups
and advertising, like everywhere you look.
Alopecia.
Yeah, Diddle-I-Go, Down Syndrome.
That's what I meant, that's what I meant.
I forgot, I get all Alopecia and Diddle-I-Go confused.
I know.
That's the one I meant to say.
But like literally it's like everywhere you look.
So like can't the skinny white blonde blue eyed California girls have like one brand
that represents them?
And Asian girl I mean a lot of like it's not that was my favorite part.
A ton of Asian girls are wearing brandy.
Everyone is wearing brandy.
That's the truth.
I'm not at all a brandy girl.
The dolls are?
You're not?
I would be thrown out of the store.
But you wear it.
But I wear brandy all the time and I fit into it.
And I've never once had a moment where I was like,
Oh no.
I just simply don't think about it. Yeah, I'm just like, oh, this is cute.
It fits.
I'm like, that's funny.
It says something weird.
Okay.
And like I said, I mean, my big criticism of Brandy lately is that it's kind of fallen off
and they don't do the edgy like Adam Smith or Berlin Waltz.
They haven't in a bit. But they do every once in a while. Even though you like they do every once in a while.
I'm like sick of the radio silence thing.
Who is that? Yeah, they need to. Well, that's another that's part of their like Gen X sensibility.
And they're like fetish for kind of this like New England sorority prep B Martha's Vineyard stuff
which is all part of the branch we all like I mean I went three times when I
was in Spain I was so homesick I was like I kind of get back to brandy and get
a new I wanted to go today I'm dying to documentary like made me curious I
haven't been in months so that's how you know the momentic desire is working is that even your haters are just amplifying your brand.
This was my favorite quote. After they opened in China and they made a shitload of money,
Stefan was happy with Chinese people, but with regards to black people, he didn't want black people.
He didn't want black people.
I love Italians. Even when they're trying to be like not racist, they're racist.
I know a black girl who worked at Brandy, by the way.
Like personally?
Mm-hmm.
Wait, I'm gonna actually...
You've met her.
Oh, interesting.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's really cute.
But no, okay.
Brandy, they make it seem like Brandy was some like,
white supremacist, like Charlottesville KKK rally ass storefront.
And the reality is actually like,
they did have like diverse girls working on the floor
and not just in the stock room or in the basement.
It's just not true.
Like I have like, I have boots on the ground.
I go to Brandi, I'm on it. I have boots on the ground. I go to I go to Brandy. I see it's not like.
It's fairly diverse, but the trick is
that the demographic breakdown was always
more in line with the reality of America.
What do you mean?
Where it was like actually proportionateate to the racial makeup of America.
Where it was like 13% of brandy employees are black, not 60.
Right.
It's not representative of the BMI of the country, but that's fine.
That's okay.
Can we have one thing? And in China, the shirts are even smaller. of the country, but that's fine. That's okay.
Can we have one thing? And in China, the shirts are even smaller.
I know, that's what I wanna know.
I wanna go back to China so I can like see for myself.
Also all the thinspo,
the Chinese thinspo they were showing,
I was like, you know these people
have very sophisticated apps that they use
to like generate these images.
Like leg from their legs.
Use like stupid boomer,
like you're showing me like Chinese like images being like, you know,
I'm like, I know what this is. Yeah. You're not good. I'm supposed to be shocked.
What I did appreciate about this documentary was that it kind of inadvertently gave us a history
of the aesthetic evolution of Brandy, like how it was kind of like corny DIY Coachella
back in 2009 to 2012, and then it became like-
Well, his father, when he owned it,
it's a family business.
And then when Stefan started to expand into the US market,
that's when they kind of, Brandy Melville,
is a girl named Brandy who meets a man from the UK.
Yeah.
His last name is Melville and they fall in love.
That's like the lore.
Like the origin myth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hence the like New England atmosphere in there.
Like mixed with Union Jack and like whatever.
Yeah.
And I guess it's based in Switzerland.
What?
I thought it was based in Prado, Italy.
That's where they do their manufacturing,
but I guess it's technically a Swiss company.
Okay.
Swiss.
Is, oh, well here's a question I have that.
Which they probably have some knots.
There's definitely like a deeper story.
Well, the guy's named Stefan Marson.
He doesn't have like an explicitly Italian sounding name.
So I'm curious if he's one of those.
He's a bald guy with the braces?
No, that's Jesse.
That's his right hand man and creative director.
That was another funny point in the documentary
where it was like, it was like this weird like fat
redhead guy who looked like a bust of Nero
and then this weird bald asshole with braces
who like made us take pictures and blah, blah, blah.
And it was just weird that these two like late 30s,
early 40s men were running a brand targeted
at teenage girls, but like, is it?
Not really.
It's not that out of the ordinary.
There's some like good businessmen.
Seems like they know where the...
It seems like men often run brands
targeted at women and children.
Well, there isn't really anything for men
that has the libidinal appeal that brandy does.
the libidinal appeal that Brandy does.
You know, like there's no like kind of like store just for guys to go and they want to get something like.
Rondorf.
Or like, yeah, there's like that like,
what's it called like Buck Mason or something
that like sells like flannel shirts,
but it's like, that's for me,
but we all know it's kind of for losers and like,
the like street wear it's kind of for losers and like the like streetwear,
it's kind of its own thing because that's really about like rarefying stuff.
But like men, but men also just are not as good of consumers as women are.
Yeah. So you can't like generate, they're not going to be like, oh, I need to get,
you know.
Well, it is a worthy goal to turn men into woman style consumers, which seems to be succeeding
bit by bit.
I feel like I just mean like Brandy as like a hot girl store.
No, no, I know what you're saying.
I just think there's no like hot guy store.
There was like Carhartt, which is like appropriated and can't really like lean in, you know
They can't they can't really like expand the brand to be more like there is like streetwear
Wigardom where they mix like a Yankee cap with a bomber and hurrah cheese or whatever
Yeah, it's not doesn't have the same energy
No, because it's all there's is like grailed kind of
philosophy around it. Yeah.
Which is like Brandy is a pretty like populist libertarian ethos that that part that does
permeate you know.
Well because I think women are just like more open and upfront about their libidinal consumerism. Yeah. And it's not
like a source of shame. Yeah, when they were showing the like the Brandy Hall
YouTube videos and like you know they also yeah I just I even actually think
that like the point they try to make about like social media
being it's also like boomed out you know that they're like social media like
created this brand because they posted pictures on tumblr of like girls with
long hair and like yeah I just don't really believe that that's quite so true
it feels like more like grassroots and something organic.
And yes, social media was a part of it, but it wasn't like...
I mean, I think it's technically true up to a certain point
that I guess this brand really wouldn't have existed
without social media.
But on the other hand, yeah, that seems like a fairly
organic thing and a fairly natural thing,
and it's not like ominous or sinister at all. None of it. Yeah. Yeah. Social media is not all evil
and ominous. There are some like organic things that occur. Yeah. Right? Like there's like timeless yeah elements at play and like even if that's the case and like it was
social media that was responsible for the success of that brand so what of it yeah it's the same
when they were like and they would call it like the jocelyn tea because it was literally a tea
that they bought from a girl named jocelyn. And you're just like, okay.
So what? Like who fucking cares?
Yeah, I'm sure if you're like a teenage girl and they take a photo of you and manufacture.
Or 30s old young girl.
But yeah, I'm a person who's shopping at Brandy. I'm buying, you know, I already am opting in
to this aesthetic. I'm wearing a Brandy-esque outfit that's maybe made,
I'm probably wearing some thrifted thing
that looks like something from brandy.
And yeah, they're gonna take a picture of it
and please manufacture some more of this item so I can,
I own six of the same brandy shirt.
Which one?
It's like, I have three in white and three in black
because I had some weird panics that I don't know, I was like, they're gonna stop making it. It's like, I have three in white and three in black, because I got, you know, I had some weird panics
that I was like, they're gonna stop making it.
It's like the cutest shirt.
It's like a kind of like cap sleeve,
like, but it has like some, it's like a little better made
than some brandy stuff.
And it's just like, I don't know.
It's not quite like a milk made top,
but it does have like a cap sleeve and like some ruching
and then like elastic, like under the boob too. So it's kind of like, almost has like a milkmaid top, but it does have like a cap sleeve and like some ruching and then like elastic like under the boob too.
So it's kind of like almost has like a built in bra
if you're small breasted, such as myself.
If you're ho...
Yeah, it's just kind of like a cute, slutty,
like basic that I like literally stocked up on.
Yeah, I don't own own six of the same thing,
but I own so many brandy tees
that are gonna be collector's items one day.
I have the Berlin Wall one.
We're gonna start in the museum of brandy
on the Lower East Side.
I mean, I, hook, line, and sinker.
I'm like, yep, this is an amazing brand.
Meet the oldest website on the internet. I'm like, yep, this is an amazing brand.
Meet the oldest web site.
I think that was it.
It's honestly, yeah, they should have interviewed us
just to get a balanced perspective.
Yeah, the interview's also weird and random
because it was like, okay, that one investigative journalist
lady, the one Teen Vogue editor fine whatever but then it was
like weird Ghanaian activists like that white libtard lady with the sunpaku eyes who was actually
really pretty and then like the at the very end they um showcased a more sustainable family brand
that was I know that was like two brothers and a father.
I checked out at that point. It was like really deep on like essence.
Um, I was, I needed a dress to wear to a wedding. So I was like doing some shopping
during that portion because it didn't seem super pertinent. But okay, here's a question I have about
the, the Ghana bit where they talk to the woman who talks about
the physical toll it takes on her body to carry.
Like the bales of clothing.
Yeah, but it's like.
Are equivalent to like your average woman's body weight
or something.
Yeah, but like, okay, why does she have to carry that
on her head?
Seriously.
Because I think it's probably hard to carry it in your arms.
And also they probably don't have those poverty carts that little old Chinese and Dominican
ladies have on the Lower East Side.
I don't want to sound crazy and out of touch.
But it seems like an ancestral practice that they've been doing for millennia that is not
at all specifically related to the ravages of the fast fashion economy.
Yeah.
And if you're so pressed about fast fashion, that would be something I would
address. I'd get them some carts.
I just would figure out a way for...
Yeah, maybe you could do some fundraising through your NGO to get them
those nar carts.
They don't have to. Why do they have to put it on their head?
It sucks that they are doing that.
Yeah.
But like it seems like someone could innovate
definitely something better.
Like maybe colonialism hasn't gone far enough
because they don't have more efficient ways.
Their own version of the wheelbarrow.
Don't have more ways their own version of the wheelbarrow
Or like why can't those like other Italian guys that are ikea shoppers
Why can't those other Italian guys that are doing the it's that easy seriously? But the the other the Italian guys that are doing the sustainable, you know thing
Why can't they team up with the people in Ghana? But why is this Stefan and Jesse's fault?
I mean, it simply does not like, you know, honest and that there's one, there's one
guy's doing their thing hanging out at Cafe Finale doing the thing though.
But there's one really like, which is so sinister shot of like, yeah, the Ghanis, like a waste crisis site.
And they're like conspicuously placed like a brandy garment
with the label like right in front of the camera.
And like, you know, most of that stuff, like by far,
if we really like were to go and break it down.
If we got the fucking data, it would not be brandy.
Brandy is not the problem.
It would be Zara Mango, Nike Adidas, like shit from all sorts of fucking shit.
Like you have no like the Alibaba most probably be Chinese.
Yeah. Like it's not shrunken cotton tees and panties from Brandy Melville. Plus it's not just gone. And like a lot of that's that stock stuff goes to Southeast Asia and like
Eastern Europe.
That's why you might notice that there's a lot of like if you online shop in the
way that I do, you know, and you're looking for Pierre Cardin,
like I am buying a lot of stuff
from Southeast Asia, from Moldova.
I'm getting a ton of soccer jerseys from Moldova.
And that's also clearly some kind of
secondary clothing resale market
that is somehow benefiting these economies,
because I'm paying a lot of money for that stuff.
And then I have to get it all dry clean because it smells like a dead body
It's a strictly one-sided proposition and they're just like dumping these like bales these shipping containers
Well, yeah, they're like Africa with no benefit to them
Clearly the African governments have also struck some deal.
They get into it a little bit that they thought they'll like somehow be penalized
if they don't take this and then they have to burn it and dump it into the ocean.
It's also protest too much.
I just am not buying it.
There's like something else going on.
Yeah, it's similar to the rapes.
It's like if there really was like something tangible and like.
Ecologically detrimental that you could pin on the brand new people,
you would do it, you wouldn't be making these vague
fear-mongering, they're dumping the toxic burned clothes
into the ocean.
But the stuff you're entering.
That's not his problem.
In a backhanded way is really a brilliant document
because it's such an indictment of like
woman logic. Like if you personally don't find my body type hot then you must be a racist and a
misogynist and a colonial overlord. Like that's the logic. It's interesting in the when they in
the very beginning of the document I say the story of Brandy Melville is a story of antisemitism. That's the first thing, the first racism and sexism. And I was like, okay.
I love how antisemitism comes first.
Why is that the first one? Because it seems like that's the one that they've done the least.
I guess you could actually make like a kind of weird tenuous case that Brandy Melville
weird tenuous case that Brandy Melville is racist
because it exploits black bodies across the supply chain.
But like what does anti-Semitism have to do with it? Because they were sharing totally anodyne
and juvenile Hitler memes.
Yeah. I mean, even the way like and again, this is like
Unkind and sleazy, but like the impression I kind of get
there, yeah, the the claims that they're somehow like
Running a pedophilic ring and maybe i'll be proved wrong and i'll be happy to you know, own up to it
and maybe I'll be proved wrong and I'll be happy to own up to it. But even the way that they refer to them as little girls and they clearly see them as kind of like, yes, they're like sexualizing them.
They talk about how they took photos of their bodies and feet or whatever. But I think if they really were inclined
to take sexual advantage of these girls,
that would be the smoking gun.
That would be an open and shut case.
Yeah, there would be massive public litigation everywhere.
Yeah.
Because these guys are like thought criminals
to the degree that they're like fans of Ayn Rand or whatever.
Yeah.
All these like libtard DAs and activists
won't hesitate to take the chance to like prosecute somebody
who, you know, say did something like uh make a meme urging black people
to text a number to vote for Hillary or whatever like if there really was something
like serious and incriminating going on you best believe everybody would be on their case
and there just like simply has not been anything
There's who told she mentions in that P in the insider piece and in the doc that there's like there were these lawsuits that are
also like nebulously
alluded to about like their racist hiring
Employees who are mostly like management higher-ups, right?
Yeah, who like there was the guy who was forced to close his stores
because Stefan thought they were too ghetto.
I love that.
And even though they were profitable,
he thought it would lower the overall value of the brand.
Which respect, that's how a real businessman works.
He fucks with his own vision.
He stays true to his vision.
And that guy's clearly bitter.
Yeah, though he's also funny and racist because he can't help himself.
And he's like, Oh, yeah, I opened a store in Toronto where there was a lot of Indians
and Pakistanis and you know.
Well, yeah, when he says fire that communist girl.
Do you have? What about those?
Those are like my tranny flag cigarettes that I bought for Antonio
and Rachel.
They're like Vibe Fusion Crush.
They have a disgusting flavor, so I'm scared to open them.
Fair enough.
That's good.
That's a good way to quit smoking is buy cigarettes that are
disgusting.
Yeah, when they're talking about
the celebrity endorsements, the Italian guys, he's like, you love the Kaia Gerber and Siley Myrus.
He literally says Siley Myrus.
It's so funny.
These whops are hilarious.
How can you be mad?
No one, you can't even say mad.
They like hired Nicolo to be a paid actor.
I mean, and in terms of their like, I mean, I applied to work at American Apparel.
Like two weeks ago.
Recently. American Apparel. Like two weeks ago. Oh recently, yeah.
No, like 2008 or 2009, whenever I graduated high school
and I distinctly remember on the job application
they make you attach photos of yourself
to make sure you're hot.
And that this was like very standard business,
you know, like, duh, they want you to be hot
to work at the store.
That's completely like.
Well, that's a question I have because I think
like according to civil rights law,
you're not allowed to discriminate against people
on the basis of their like race or religion
or sex or sexual orientation.
But what about their Riz?
But can you discriminate against people
on the basis of being hot or not?
That's not written in the law.
No.
I mean, I guess technically it is discrimination,
like by definition, but.
It seems too hard to define legally.
Right, and yeah.
You know? Yeah.
Then you're getting into a whole arbitration process
that no one wants to really be a part of.
I would love to be like a prosecutor being like,
your honor, this is the Patrice O'Neill scale.
Look at how ugly my client is.
We have decided to throw out the one to 10 scale
and are only operating according to the binary scale now.
Objection, your honor.
My client is good at zero on the binary.
And I believe this is why they were not hired to work at American Apparel.
I was offered a job at American Apparel but I was moving away. I was like imminently moving.
I was like I can't. I was like I'd love to but I can't do it. I also love how they, several of the
girls they interviewed were like well that girl who told the story of like
the junior associate swiffering the floor
without the swiffer pads,
it was just like rubber on concrete or whatever.
And how girls were clearly hired based on like their BMI
and their like sexual marketplace value versus on their like retail skills, which is hilarious.
Yeah.
I mean, okay. Also like props respect that you can run a successful business with a workforce of total
retards. It doesn't occur to them to like put the Swiffer pad on the Swiffer.
to put the Swiffer pad on the Swiffer.
Yeah, they describe the back room as being this
hoarder's nest. They're like, I can't even... Yeah. The one in Soho has a cafe.
What? Where? Maybe it's for employees only.
And you know what else is so funny that is completely conspicuously left out of the
documentary? If you want to go down the like black exploitation route
is that all the like security guys
in all the New York stores are African men
who are like eunuch harem guards
out of like an orientalist painting
like guarding this like precious treasure
of beautiful white teen girls.
And also like I don't want to like dox anyone or give anyone trouble because you know those men
should have their livelihoods and are probably sending money back to their like to Ghana.
Those guys are clearly legal immigrants. I mean I don don't know. I mean, they must be. Why?
I mean, the entire like a workforce of New York City,
like the service workforce is like,
if you work at a restaurant or a store,
everyone in like the back room in the kitchen
is like fully undocumented.
But it seems like, well, I guess because Brandy has the kind
of like unorthodox franchising model where each store is its own.
That's possible, I suppose.
But I think you can't be like a security Zara if you're an illegal immigrant.
Yeah, I'd be curious.
They'd want to see your papers.
Probably.
So it's a jobs creation program too.
So the brand's doing a ton of really good stuff. They're literally contributing to the cause of migrants,
which makes them like the wakest company ever.
They're amazing.
The Atlas Shrugged, they need to lean into it.
The Atlas Shrugged stuff. I mean, they kind of did.
They do. They do. But I'm, you know,
they've kind of actually stopped
the John Gall stuff recently.
It's rare though, if you go into a PacSun,
they, oh, right, yeah.
As I do as a tall woman also,
they have like a brandy section at PacSun
that's called John Gall's.
I love to walk into PacSun.
So which is another thing. Ooh, that's Ava,alt. I love to walk into PacSun. So which is another thing.
Ooh, that's Ava, that's Alana, those are my girls.
They don't, yeah, there's so much that this documentary
does not explore that like actual brandy experts
such as ourselves would do a way better job
of like getting to the bottom of.
Like I would just be so interested in understanding
their business structure and
their various like holding companies and it's like you know like every store is owned technically
by a different company. Right but the franchise the trademark is on Brandy Melville and that's
what they're kind of it's not like that might be kind of how Chick-fil-A works,
which is why it's also such a good business.
Is cause every, like there is like immense,
not immense, but like as a Chick-fil-A franchise owner,
I think you, it's not like owning a different,
another fast food franchise.
You like have, you might like have more control over the store and stuff.
And since it's a Christian business also they take a lot of pride in you know.
Well that's you know doesn't matter. I'm going to become a union leader
and try to unionize Brandy Melville. It's just going to be like um
Brandy Melville. It's just gonna be like a based coalition of like teen girls and African fun. I mean that's another you know good point that like there hasn't been any like organic grievances
that have resulted in any labor organizing or like.
The benefit of hiring teen girls
is that they're literally retarded and competent
and also don't need the job or the money
because their parents pay for their lifestyles,
especially in New York or LA.
They're literally rich, pretty popular girls.
They say that in the documentary that they like,
especially the girls they hired to do market research
that they flew to China and Milan and stuff.
I mean, it's so mutually beneficial.
Like they get free market research off of like somebody
who's like really tapped in, plugged in to the culture.
And then the teen girls get to feel like useful
and important.
And hot.
And hot because they're like contributing to,
they're putting their thinking caps on.
Yeah.
Yeah. There's that video of that girl like in bed
and she's like, it's just so cool to know that like these
pants will be like pants that I like picked out
and that I'm like valuable to this company. It's
like in those in the you mentioned the Soho loft and one girl was like and yeah I guess I thought
it was weird there's a middle-aged Italian guy living there. Of course no I'm sure like I am sure that there are like
Of course. No, I'm sure like I am sure that there are like
grievances with Brandy that are far worse than
Literally anything that this documentary describes but that they must see probably
Grievances in any big multinational conglomerate every job sucks Yeah, and working at Brandy doesn't seem so bad in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, like my first job was at fucking Vaughn's.
It was like a grocery bagger and they made you wear a tie.
Yeah, I could make a fucking sob story documentary about how I was exploited and blah blah.
My first job was at like
Dansk outlet. Yeah.
At MarketFair. My first job was at like, Dansk Outlet. Yeah.
At Market Fair.
They discriminated against me for not smiling enough.
Which is a part of my-
And then my second job was like at Pier One Imports
in North Brunswick.
It was a really bleak and depressing scene.
Yeah.
I'd much rather be like goofing off in the stock room
with some women of color.
Mm-hmm. And also like people, yeah like people always like air the truth even when they're lying to your face. I'd much rather be goofing off in the stock room with some women of color.
And also people always err the truth even when they're lying to your face.
Like the black girl sales associate
that they interviewed.
The one.
Yeah.
They found one.
Actually told the truth where she was like,
it didn't occur to me because I was having so much fun
goofing off with my fellow black and Latino people of color
in the stock room or like the
investigative journalist lady was
basically admitted to the fact that in spite of our like diversity and inclusion efforts the ideal
Is still being like skinny
And pretty and white
Yeah, she says that herself
And pretty and white. Yeah, she says that herself
But like whose ideal is that like no one's forcing that down your throat it's
memetic
It happens sorry to be using that word
like it's a kind of it's
It's like, it's a kind of it's innate to human nature.
But also if you truly and honestly reject that ideal, which seems to be an ideal.
Go ahead, start a fat girl store.
See how that goes.
Good luck.
The times throughout the ages,
if you truly reject that ideal,
then you just like march the beat of your own drum
and do your own thing.
And you're like a salonge or something with
your natural hair and a weird hair pick in your afro. You don't try to retaliate against the
cultural overlords. You just do your own thing. You know what I'm saying? The minute that you start
reacting, retaliating, responding, that means that you subscribe to that ideal and it's on you.
Exactly.
to that ideal and it's on you. Exactly. Like if you seriously don't take that ideal seriously and you don't buy into it then you just sit back and relax and watch it undo itself which it never
will because it's here to stay but still you know what I'm saying? Or like yeah you just develop a
distinct personal style that like eclipses. Like cool and avant-garde, you get modeling jobs and you become an influencer and whatever.
You know, Stefan is proof that like an American, an immigrant can achieve great things in America
and you can, you know, you really, like there is so much, there is so much opportunity.
It's an immigrant success story such as ourselves.
Exactly.
There is like so much opportunity. And I also think ideals and standards are great
because they give you an anchor that you can rebel against,
if nothing else.
And I can't.
The truth is the clothes are well enough made.
well enough made. And the real sad thing about fast fashion
is that even if it postures or gestures
towards something better or more high brow,
it's so flimsy and shitty and sucks
that the cotton basics available to you at Brandy
are just a vastly superior product.
And what happened with American Apparel,
like Dov Charney's downfall was precipitated
by his company being co-opted,
and then the quality.
By communists.
Basically. And who, by the way, whose his whole thing was like, ethical labor practices, was that
he was not specifically not operating a sweatshop that the price of the clothes and the quality.
I mean, that's what happens when you let alternative communists with piercings into your institutions,
they will literally destroy all your stores.
I forget how it, no, it was was like the company was, I forget.
No, but what was the deal?
Like he did all these like kind of showy displays of ethical labor practices,
but was ultimately undone by some like proto-MeToo scandal.
But he also was not like hypocritical about it.
Like part of the ethos was always this, it was like ethical pervert pervert it was like it was like you could be ethical and still be like
but it's interesting that he was ultimately like fucked by it but so far
Stefan and Jesse have stayed ahead of the curve I think that is due, I don't know,
probably to the way that his business was structured.
And there was a domestic and not foreign.
And then it became such a big company
that then there were other shareholders involved
and then he was able to be ousted through this,
yeah, scandal about his perversions
and sexual practices.
It is really surprising.
Some of which with his like employees.
But my point is that this was all precipitated
once he had already lost control of the company
by like a decline, much like Weinstein,
in the quality of the product.
Like the clothes at American Apparel got shittier.
Yeah, they always kick you when you're down.
But it wasn't his fault.
No, I know, I know.
In some ways it was.
They never get you when you're at the top.
Exactly.
And they always get you when you're no longer useful
or interesting to them.
Well, and that's partly why, like,
because Brandy has yet to, like, truly fall off,
because it still is a place where you can go and get,
like, some comfy fucking
bike shorts and a weird little baby tee and like a weird tank top that like your
boyfriend can like grope you in later it's like you know or whatever it's like
that's that much harder to like if they went back to making like shitty flimsy
like forever 21 like Coachella gear backless sun dresses.
Yeah, like it would but they they had they haven't.
Well, if the Chinese have any say, we shall see if the Chinese come to dominate their
markets. It's over.
It's too small.
Yeah, but that's another big glaring hole in that documentary that I don't think they
mentioned American Apparel once. American Apparel is like the big precursor to Brandy Melville.
And was like in its ideology like specifically against the sweatshop, you know, that it had like
a there was a bedrock of like ethics that it was kind of founded on. But now when you get like a Los Angeles apparel product,
there's like the picture of like the Mexican or Guatemalan
who sewed it with his story written into the tag.
I think they used to do that at American Apparel maybe too,
but the Los Angeles apparel stuff is on par, is the same.
It's, it is, you know, it's as good
as the old American Apparel stuff.
But like, I remember, I'm really not humble bragging,
but I'm really not, I'm really not.
I'm just saying what had happened,
but I was asked to model for American Apparel,
like 10 years, you know, I was like 24, 25, I was like a waitress
and approached several times about modeling
for American Apparel, which at this time
was post-Ovcharny's ousting and I really saw
as being on the decline
and I was tempted to, but then I recalled
like Leah Seydoux's American Apparel campaign, you know?
And like, you know, I just, I didn't do it specifically
because I was like, this is really like,
I don't want my image attached to something
that is like,
falling off.
That's falling off so hard and so quickly.
Well who approached you?
This woman who worked for J.Crew
who ended up taking over American Apparel,
which then went bankrupt like probably a year later.
You know, it was like they were on the cusp of bankruptcy.
Dove Charney currently runs Los Angeles Apparel,
is that the idea?
Yeah, yeah.
And I have modeled since four Los Angeles Apparel. Is that the idea? Yeah, yeah.
And I have modeled since for Los Angeles Apparel.
But how did he ring that?
He just called it something else.
He just changed the name,
but kept kind of the branding the same.
You would think that he would be completely ousted,
blacklisted from.
Well, because he was so hands-on as a CEO,
he understood the fundamentals of manufacturing
and could still open another factory and could continue.
He's a success story.
We should do a test talk on the fundamentals of manufacturing.
The best glycine to get.
No, but yeah, he started a new brand that is branded the same as his old brand.
Right.
Smart.
Because he's entitled to it because he created that company.
Right.
But I think that that's the biggest insult for me when these journalists and activists
try to make some weird flimsy gay case against Brandy Melville.
At the end of the day, I don't really care that much about Brandy Melville one way or another.
But I would be devastated.
I'd be sad.
Yeah. But whatever. At the end of the day, whatever.
But once again, I didn't even know about it until 2018.
It is very maddening, very infuriating when somebody goes out of their way to create
like a brand or a product or an institution according to their particular singular vision,
which is by definition exclusive and therefore possibly offensive to thin skin, desperate losers, and then they get punished for it.
People like that should be celebrated.
Like anybody who creates something of their own.
And it's always like these spiritually obese people
who are going around like tearing people down.
Well, that was also what was so unjust about Dov Charney, you know, is that we were all loving it.
We were all like, and he did do something kind of revolutionary, you know, it wasn't like it was
inclusive, you know, in that like the girls that were modeling American Apparel were not models. They were like normal hot girls.
They had like, yeah, like not overly toned midsections and armpit hair, but they were
like sexy in a perverted way, which is what you want.
They were hot.
Like in an abject way.
And we all loved the ads with the pictures, the girls, the literal calm on their face.
Like we all were like, huh, we would huh, we were loving it and celebrating it.
And like.
But that's always how it goes.
Yeah, I know.
And then some like reasonable, miserable idea is like,
oh, well, they personally didn't make room,
like make space for me.
So now I have to like pick through lawsuits
and write exposés to like
can you imagine how hard I like virtually impossible it is to launch a successful brand
even if you have daddy's money as I assume the Stefan Marsan guy does right well they
mentioned briefly in the doc that Abercrombie and Fitch tried to acquire Brandy and basically couldn't
because Brandy had surpassed them and they were shocked to actually learn how profitable
Brandy was.
That it wasn't some...
It's a worldwide phenomenal brand.
They can't afford it.
I'm curious what Brandy Melville's finances look like now.
The same to better.
You think?
Yeah, if anything, this documentary
was a massive advertisement for, like, I can't-
I have kind of like a negative hot take,
which is that this documentary will probably be
more of a benefit than a loss on the whole whole because there's no such thing as bad press.
Like all press is good press,
but just something about the overall vibe,
like the energy is off.
Like lately you go in there.
There's something like-
I don't know dude, we gotta go in the store.
More interesting going on.
We gotta go in the store.
It's all radio silence.
They don't even do the Jesus tease anywhere.
Something's wrong, but it has nothing to do with this.
Mark my word.
And I don't wanna be the,
I don't wanna be the,
In the Oracle.
Oh no.
The messenger of bad news because I love Brandy
and I want them to survive, but.
I think we should go to the store.
And do an episode and record
We also we have some merch dropping
But
Adolf Hitler
That brandy fans will appreciate is all I have to say.
It's commendable.
Yeah, I mean, it's like really cool to do something like that.
I have that vision.
I haven't been in a while because I don't live in Soho anymore, but I-
You haven't what?
Been to Brandy in a while, but not that long.
And I don't think-
Weakening.
I do, I always go.
I used to, well, I used to go to Forever 21.
Yeah, but that's all over.
Completely, but-
I'm selling my Forever 21 pleather, faux leather,
Honda shorts on Depop if anybody wants them for $10.
That's good.
Because I don't overcharge your price gouge.
I know you're very fair.
I do it so that-
You're fighting against fast fashion.
My shit can find a forever home.
I know, you actually are.
In terms of fast fashion, yeah,
I do buy some lingerie on Alibaba
and I do be buying some sleazy ass shit
that basically has to go in the trash.
But all lingerie is essentially fast fashion. Yeah. Even like the nice like, yeah, on rare occasion. Yeah, I buy something
that I'm like, I'll just let me cut out the middleman of having this woman from Ghana carry
on her head. I'll just throw it in the trash. You know, the crotch to scare my boyfriend.
No, I'm like, yeah, I mean, I, oh my God.
I bought a cheerleading uniform on eBay recently and I bought a couple, I was on Ambien
and one was great and then one was also pretty good.
But I just was like, you can't have two.
And then I was like, I just threw it away
because I was like, I'm not gonna, you know,
who am I gonna, I can't, I don't have to donate this.
Like, you know, it's like.
Dasha, you have to do what I do,
which is put it in a reusable tote bag
and set it outside of your local Catholic church.
That's what I do.
Well, I, no, I, no.
It's so sick.
It's like my brandy Melvilleville like Blasphemous garbage and like
Though there is the Catholic worker in
These village takes clothing donations
That's where I donate my clothes to primarily because The ones that aren't like a cheerleading new firm
that I'm like, why would a bomb want this?
You know?
And I'm like, I just say, I'm like,
and I'm like, oh, it's so sick that you even bought this.
Just throw it away, you can't even look at it, you know?
But mostly, yeah, I'm like, I am like donating my clothes
and I'm buying a lot of secondhand
that I'm paying like exorbitant prices for to people in Moldova or whatever.
And I'm trying and you know, I'm not in your depop business is, you know, that's how I
know you're fighting the waste crisis.
Kardashian and like 2003 like ebay power seller
Babe, you're an activist
You're fighting the waste crisis. I'm a a low level rug merch
That was forever 21 shorts, whatever
That's that I wore all through the pandemic. That's a little less weight on that woman in gana's
head the pandemic. That's a little less weight on that woman in Ghana's head.
Those shorts would literally like melt on an African woman's
head because they're made of like the cheapest polyurethane.
I'm sorry to say it again, but they don't need to do all that.
They don't need to do what? Like carry stuff on their head?
Honestly, like I've done it before and it's easy and comfortable. Like if you're carrying laundry, it's good to put it on their head. Honestly, like I've done it before and it's easy and comfortable.
Like if you're carrying laundry,
it's good to put it on your head.
I'm sure that yeah, it's easier than like carrying it.
It's literally what all women like south of the equator,
what delicious tacos,
what all chicken coop cleaner women have done
for eons for millennia.
Like let's not make this like a woke political
crusade. That's just what they do. And all of them have like scoliosis and blown out hips because
they do manual labor while the men play like electronic backgammon. And they give birth to
like six to 12 babies throughout their fertile years. Yeah.
It's like no one said the world was an easy place. Like not for women.
Yeah.
Not unless you're from Santa Monica that works at Brandy Melville.
I know.
Not unless you have access to the Soho loft and even then you might
encounter some troubles from the middle-aged Italian men.
That's also weird.
Where is that apartment?
Definitely like, it's right there.
It's like, let me in there.
Can I check out the brandy loft?
Whatever.
I gotta go.
I gotta go soon.
He's like, you are here to clean the apartment?
Sorry, you must leave. You're a communist? You will destroy our entire operation. You must go.
I'm doing Russian voice for no reason. Let me see what else I have on my note.
I also do love how Brandy Melville, if you really think about it, sounds so ESL.
Because like Brandy's not really a typical American girl. It's kind of a black name.
And like Melville's not really a typical English guy name.
Yeah, no, it's that's why. But that's also...
Herman Melville.
Yeah, exactly. It's like part of it's like, that's why it has such pull too, I think, because it has
this like, the fantasy of it is so strong that like, you know, like an evil sorority
girl, you're like buying into like this whole...
It's like the Amanda Knox story.
Exactly.
It's beautiful.
It's got like tragic and like triumphant elements.
It has like.
You know they're casting that movie.
What?
The Amanda Knox story.
Interesting.
Just saying.
I mean, come on.
I look like E.G. and Carol.
Let me know when they're casting the E.G. and Carol. Let me know when they're casting the E.G. and Carol.
It's like you and what's the name?
Austin Powell.
But like a hair. Did you see Trump in Harlem?
That's so cute.
I'm going to Bodega.
Yes, baby.
He's so good, dude.
I mean, I'll say I had a dream last week.
I've been dreaming a lot.
I'm having a lot of very intense dreams.
I don't know why because usually
I haven't changed anything with my medication which usually gives me a nice comatose kind of...
But I've been dreaming a lot and I had a really...
It's so gay, dude. It's so gay. I had a dream that I was at some kind of like, it wasn't a rally.
It was kind of like some kind of like political conference.
Yeah, let's have you interpret the dream.
Okay, so we're going to do some youngie in an L. Here we go.
So yeah, I'm it's not a rally.
It's like some kind of political convention.
Let's say there's many booths around, you know, and you sure it's not a rally. It's like some kind of political convention.
Let's say there's many booths around, you know.
And-
Are you sure it's not an art fair?
It feels like an art fair, basically.
But there's like-
It's like a political art fair.
Yeah.
And I see-
Imagine if people, if somebody did that,
it would be like the most amazing thing.
It's like Lee Feng, Michael Tracy, Glenn Greenwald.
Everybody has their own political,
that would be Norman Finkelstein.
Yeah, and the fans can go around, you know. And I see Donald Trump, and I come up to him, and I say,
Mr. Trump, President Trump, I love you. I dream of you. The spirit of the times is coursing through you.
And he smiles at me and he goes, come here.
And then we start waltzing and then we start tap dancing.
And then we do this elaborate dance routine
where he's tossing me in the air and stuff.
I'm like, we do this like amazing.
But no hanky panky.
Not at all, no, not a sexual dream at all.
Literally just like the ecstatic joy of like dance
and like, yeah, the visceral feeling
of being like tossed in the air and then caught.
And then like, you know, we're really like,
it was almost as if we had like rehearsed it.
Your mutual appetite for performance.
Something. Yeah. And your latent desire to become his communications.
We were in like total synergy. We were like, you know, it was like just we were just it was. I mean, and I woke up like, it's so happy. That's it. That's the dream. I think it's that. Yeah. But I feel like the people
on the subreddit will have better, more illuminating. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.
But it's also, I think the fact that he keeps people like us young.
People like us, so true.
No, yeah, he clearly means a lot to me. And gives us hope.
Well, it's because I've been getting the emails from him lately have been like,
I love you.
I'll never stop loving you.
They're very devoted and quasi romantic.
The dream again was not sexual in any way,
but they are full of this kind of unconditional love,
and he keeps hawking these MAGA hats
that I'm not falling for.
But yeah, literally being like,
do you still love, I got one that the subject was,
do you still love me, Dasha?
I love you forever, you better believe it.
And the dream I had shortly after receiving that one.
I don't know, yeah, I don't know.
Well, he gives people like us hope in life.
Yeah, yeah, that seems like a good read.
Because sometimes I feel very sad and melancholic when I survey
the landscape, and I'm just like, people really don't get it,
and they're either cowards or retards.
Yeah.
Because how can you reject a man who's so clearly
and evidently friendly and good natured?
Well, the spirit of the times is coursing through, yeah.
Like there's something like inevitable
and beautiful about him.
You know, it's like he's, I don't know.
It was very moving.
It's a prophetic dream about how he's gonna come
on Red Scare podcast. I think It was very moving. It's a prophetic dream about how he's gonna come on Red Scare podcast.
I think it was, yeah.
We will dance.
Yeah, I will dance with Donald Trump.
Um...
I had another one. Do you want to hear?
Sure, sure.
How are we on time?
We're at an hour 24.
Oh, okay. Yeah, go off.
You know.
I'm like finna go to the bodega and buy a cigarette. Oh, no
I just like disappear into the night
Cigarettes enough to do the podcast alone
The Dariya Demetrovna podcast coming to you live from downtown New York.
You were in this one, so it might be very interesting for you.
But I had a dream that I went back to college and went to a Catholic college called Mercy
University, which is a real Catholic college in like Harlem, but that is like predominantly Hispanic,
some weird big trade school or something,
but this wasn't with the school my dream,
but I was like, I'm going back to school.
I'm going to Mercy University.
And you and Heiji and Matu were like telling you,
you were like, it's not like that good of a school.
You all were like, it's not a good school.
You're not going to a good school.
You were like, why are you going to a school that's so bad?
And I was like, it's not a bad school.
I was like, we're going to the Vatican next year
on the class trip.
And then I was in the, I don't know what they call it on a college campus,
like the merch store. And I was looking at a lot of-
Where they sell like the booty shorts.
It was actually very similar to a brandy Melville, but it had lots of really cute kind of like
collegiate merchandise that said Mercy on it. And the mascot of the college was a fox. And so it
had lots of cute like fox motif,
like Mercy stuff and I was like stocking up.
I was shopping, you know.
You were doing a hall and then unboxing.
I was doing a Mercy University hall.
And Matu and Heiji and I were disapproving
of your decision to go back to school.
Yeah, because you said the school was bad.
But I said the school's not bad. We're going to the Vatican.
Does it matter if the school is bad? No. Yeah.
And the fox is, I think in Song of Solomon in the Bible, there's a part where they say,
Song of Solomon in the Bible, there's a part where they say, catch us the little foxes that tear up the vineyard,
which I recently learned was like not a good thing
that the foxes are tearing up.
Like, I remember reading that being like,
that's so cute, the foxes are doing that.
But apparently it's like the foxes are,
I read some like interpretations of the text that are like,
oh, the foxes are like heretics
or like really seems like they're women, but eat Pharisees, whatever, but they're causing
damage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I was like, that's so cute.
You know, how could you be mad?
They're just animals.
Is this a dream about the fact that sometimes you worry that people perceive
your religious devotion is not serious or genuine?
As being like impish and trollish, like the fox.
Yes, yeah.
Maybe.
I think that's what that is.
Yeah, but I'm enrolled.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. that's my read on it.
The girls get like degrees in young and psychoanalysis.
And it's me and Hagee and Matthew because we're like the judgmental adults.
I don't know. I don't know why you guys, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's always like the thing with dreams is that they're always like weird,
random, like substrate residue of like stuff that you literally just like.
There was like other kind of imbue observed throughout the day.
And then like kind of anxiety stuff.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
I don't know if like dreams are like prophetic necessarily.
I think they're mostly like they become a self-fulfilling prophecy
because they're symbolic vessels of your fears and anxieties.
I think they can be.
I think I've had prophetic dreams that were never ever useful to me at the time
that I understood as like, you know, but then I've dreamt things
that I've then experienced.
Right, same.
But this is- That then,
in a way that wasn't like a self-fulfilling,
you know, like I had a dream once
that I was being photographed with a blindfold on
and like remembered the experience of like the camera flash
but being blindfolded.
And then I did some like photo shoots a while later with that, you know,
like stuff like that or like, yeah, just kind of like more like the atmosphere of
a dream that in a way I could never like articulate or anticipate well then
manifest in my life.
I think like the Trump dream is like neither here nor there.
And it's like basically a dream about how you
I'm doing all the right things.
Yeah. Like you're, you are a person who's like basically in a similar lane in
alignment with his vision.
But this stream is like very clearly about the fact that you feel attacked for your religious devotion.
You weren't being like none. You weren't like being cruel. No, I know.
You were all kind of like remarking. You were like, dubious and skeptical. Yeah. You were
remarking kind of in a matter of fact way. Yeah. The college that I chose to go back
to was not a really good school. Yeah, but I think that that's like the essential,
yeah, like anxiety, fear in that dream. That's my read on it. I'm also very drunk and retarded. No, no, no, it's I'm yeah
That's that's occurred to me for sure
the Trump dream, I mean sometimes I literally have like
I've had dreams where I'm like shop. I yeah, I do
Trying on different kinds of lingerie and then I wake up being like no that was nice, you know
Like sometimes my I do have like,
maybe because of all my brain damage, like, I just do my subconscious is unable to like,
generate anything interesting. So I just have these kind of like placid, like pleasant dreams.
But also like, I feel like dreams like concretize things that you already sense or feel on an
intuitive level that don't that you haven't had like proof or evidence
Yeah, there's information in dream for sure. It's just about like it's not always clear and there isn't really a straightforward way to like interpret them
but
I'd be curious. Wait, we should do a love line where we interpret people's dreams.
That's so boring.
You know it'd be so boring.
People leave like three minute long voice
about their intricate as dreams
about people we don't know.
I'm such a naive idealist.
I like pictured this thing of like people call,
like girls and gays calling in
and keeping it under a minute.
But it's gonna be like seven minutes of like,
yeah, and so like he was European, he was in his sixties,
but it didn't get sexual right away. It was actually kind of platonic and
patern. Yeah. But yeah.
What was I going to say? Fuck something about dreams.
You have any dreams?
Oh yeah. I had a no, but I had a, a,
um, Oh yeah, I had a, no, but I had a sinister homosexual roommate who went on to become
a celebrity hairdresser.
He said, what did he say?
He said like, photos are like dreams.
I don't care unless I'm in it
or somebody's fucking.
So true.
Which is so true.
Yeah.
I mean that guy was a real brilliant genius.
Shout out to Tim Alward.
I'm gonna really tank his career by mentioning him
on my racist and sexist podcast.
I will mention that that seems like a quote I've heard
before.
I mean it's clearly a quote he stole from like some other
Some other gay guy. homosexual brandy. I think like it's clearly a quote he stole from some other gay guy.
Some other homosexual brand.
I think Oscar Wilde maybe said that or something.
Yeah, literally.
Sorry, I knocked over all your piss perfume.
Whatever.
It's fine.
But no, that's true.
Yeah, it's not.
But people have a lot of dreams about us, But I don't think we could build a whole episode out
of that.
I mean, I've read like threads on the sub where they talk about
having dreams about us and I those always feel fake. They're
like woke toddler memes.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
It's also very hard to like meaningfully remember a dream.
Once you've had it.
Once you start dreaming, if you're in a phase like I am now where you're dreaming a lot, I'm having a lot of recall. But it's good. I mean, the fact that you're dreaming a lot
means you're getting good deep sleep. That's why I'm not dreaming a lot.
Because you're sleep deprived. I'll tell you my dreams once we wrap up.
Yeah, actually dark. No, I'd love to hear.
Sorry. You have to get it.
You're going to have to subscribe to an even more expensive page
to hear Anna's dreams.
Anyway, we can wrap it up. I mean, we did the show.
Yeah, dog. I mean, this is good because I really thought we would have nothing to talk
about and we couldn't really wring that much content from the brandy documentary.
Thank you.
But look at us now.
Thank you to Max.
Wait, who's Max? Oh, HBO Max.
HBO Max. It's just called Max. And Kate. Max and uh, wait, who's Max?
Oh, HBO Max.
HBO Max, it's just called Max.
And Kate.
Typically Max.
Kate Taylor.
We should have her on the bus.
We should have, I want Stefan.
Oh yeah.
I want Stefan Marson.
Do you think he would do it?
No, he's a shadowy figure.
He would never.
He would do it.
We're too old.
No, no, he would do it.
He would do it.
Okay.
People are weak and easily flattered and highly
predictable. We love what you've done. We love your racist and sexist brand. We want
to see me. Please don't excerpt this in MasterCut, a Red Scare podcast. It was AI. It was AI.
Anna didn't say that was AI. AI generated. No way to prove it.
I'm actually not really a huge Hitler fan because as you said, I hate him. He's not
a very good artist and he lost. He's a loser. He wrought a lot of destruction on my motherland
of Belarus. I like thought about this. I've like I've thought must be nice to be a Hitler
fan, but I just can't bring myself to do. I don't have, I'm not about this. I've like I thought must be nice to be a Hitler fan, but I just can't bring myself to do
I don't have I'm not autistic enough. I don't have like a
Libidinal or parasocial attachment to Hitler zero. He does nothing for me as a man
Yeah, I'm interested in the Nazis as like a phenomenon
and I think that should be okay and like allowed to be like explored and voiced and you know like
aesthetically Marston because he really created the brand according to his
unique vision but it wasn't so successful in the end Woo woo woo! Woo! All right, well, see you in hell.
See you in hell.