I Went Undercover at the Brandy Melville Model Open Casting
It all started with an Instagram story...
FRESHMAN YEAR OF LIFE
Your (un)definitive guide to the first year after graduation
The blind (me) will be leading the blind (you, if you’ve found yourself on this substack) in a series of conversations about being adults, kind of.
Today, I’ll be veering off the course of interviewing my parents, and heading toward the field of investigative journalism.
It all started when my roommate, Sara, texted me the following screenshot:
Sara knows I’ve been writing article after article about teen girls and their relationship to Uggs (spoiler: they love the Classic Mini but HATE the new Mary Jane), so she thought this event might intrigue me.
And she was right. A Brandy Melville open casting call for models? This was my insane asylum—I was Nellie Bly.
After some brief back-and-forth about a clog in our shower, I was officially IN.
And thankfully, when the day finally came, so did Sara, cause I was not too embarrassed to be seen in the Brandy open casting line, but I was too embarrassed to be seen in it alone.
As I fueled up for my first-ever modeling casting with a croissant, I realized it was going to be harder to blend in than I’d thought. Somehow, I’d missed the memo on the unofficial Brandy model uniform: long jeans, vintage leather jacket, tiny bag, and being 5’11”.
Nonetheless, I was there to LEARN and REPORT (and I’d already forgone fitting in by arriving to the casting straight from a brunch where I’d dressed like I was trying to enter a Blair Waldorf lookalike contest in Washington Square Park).
When I finally arrived at St. George’s Cafe (Brandy Melville’s… flagship coffee chain?), the line was already wrapped around the block.
I imagined I would use the wait time to interview people: How do you feel about Brandy’s one-size-fits-all methodology? Are you offended? Inspired? Are the salesgirls as mean to you as they are to me? Is it nature or Brandy-corporate-nurture the way they manage to say “do you want a bag” so hatefully? How old are you? Did you come into the city for this casting? Are you accompanied by anyone today? Does anyone from Greenwich actually wear those tank tops that just say “Greenwich” and why don’t they make them for other suburbs?
What actually happened was that I spent the whole time talking to this girl Erin who was my age and completely normal. At first, I wondered if she could sniff out that I was a Member of the Press, but based off of her general coolness and actually-lived-in leather jacket, even if she heard me loudly whispering to Sara about “staying incognito,” she didn’t care.
By the time I got to the front entrance, there was fully a bouncer, and two momagers chatting on the bench. One of them was wearing Uggs, so I considered using my expertise to slide into their conversation and gather some scoop. However, at this point I’d developed Stockholm Syndrome, and I was actually getting nervous that my turn was coming up.
Inside, the energy was tense. We all fixed our bra straps, applied our last dashes of chapstick, and checked our teeth in front-facing phone cameras for the last time. I stepped onto the stairs, at the top of which I presumed there would be a photographer directing us prospective models. Suddenly a whiteboard was shoved into my hands, which I frantically filled out. My palms were sweating, and my heart was beating out of my chest.
I handed my phone to Sara, who, as a young professional and responsible person opted not to be photographed for the chance to model baby tees. Luckily, she was happy to be my momager. “Can you hold my phone and take a pic of me when it’s happening?” I whispered.
If any of you ever attend a Brandy Melville open casting, here’s what you should do:
Wear an item of clothing from their brand
Prepare to wait in line for 1+ hours
Bring a bottle of water
And here’s what you should not do:
Insinuate that you or anyone you know has a phone with camera functionality
“NO PHOTOS!” “DELETE ANY PHOTOS YOU MAY HAVE!”
A lanky nineteen-year-old with micro-bangs and a waggling finger descended from above. She yanked my whiteboard out of my hands, pointed to an open area, and handed the whiteboard to her accomplice, who handed it back to me, instructed me to hold it right under my face, and snapped a photo with an iPhone as I struggled to adjust the board (and wondered why Microbangs didn’t just hand the board directly to me in the first place).
“Next!”
A giggling teen took my place and Microbangs uttered, “You’re now eligible for a free matcha or coffee,” to seemingly no-one.
“Was that it?” asked Sara, still rattled from the cruel treatment of her talent (me).
I ordered a chai latte with whole milk, but was informed they only had oat.
“I guess so,” I answered, then took a sip of the latte. It was the best chai latte of my life. I would’ve waited in any line, signed any waiver, taken off any item of clothing, for this latte.
So what could possibly compel 300+ sixteen-year-old girls, their moms, and even a couple of dads to spend two hours lined up outside a cafe owned by a one-size-fits-all tank top brand?
I don’t know, all I care about is if I got a callback.
Needing more of this undercover work 🤌🏼🙌🏼
On the edge of my seat…praying there’s a callback!!