Since opening its first US store in 2009, Brandy Melville has built a cult following among teenage and young-adult shoppers and expanded to more than 100 locations worldwide. It has done so around a proposition most competitors would regard as commercially reckless: narrow sizing, restrictive returns, little corporate communication, and, in June 2026, the reported closure of fitting rooms across stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Many of the brand’s garments remain available only in a narrow XS/S size range, while its US policy gives customers limited remedies for in-store purchases. The model appears hostile to the customer. Its success suggests the hostility is part of what customers are buying.

The same pattern runs through the business. Brandy Melville asks the customer, and, it is alleged, the employee, to conform to a narrowly defined image. The size range, the returns policy and, by former employees’ accounts, the hiring criteria stay put; the adjustment falls on the person. For department stores, the question is what they take on when they host a brand customers clearly want and many cannot wear.

IADS Exclusive – IADS Exclusive: Brandy Melville and the business of exclusion

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