An Obscure Italian Brand Is Suddenly The Hottest Name In Teen Retail

Italian clothing company Brandy Melville is the next hottest brand in teen retail, according to a new study.

The company, which sells a wide array of tiny crop tops, high-waisted bottoms, and slouchy sweaters, didn't even exist in the U.S. until five years ago.

It still has a small store presence in the country - just 18 stores total - but thanks to a robust e-commerce business, it's now ranked No. 1 among brands that teen girls say they are starting to wear, according to Piper Jaffray's latest survey on teen spending. The company wasn't even ranked among the top 10 up-and-coming brands in previous surveys. 

The company's recent rise has been helped by its popular Instagram account, which has more than two million followers and mainly features the same group of ultra-skinny, long-haired white girls posing in the brand's clothes.

Some of the girls appear to be professional models. Others are part of Brandy Melville's teen focus group, many of whom have become Internet famous as a result of their exposure to the brand's followers, reports Racked. "Product research is made up of all teenage girls," Kjerstin Skorge, a 16-year-old from Malibu, told Racked's Julia Rubin. The team consists of about 20 girls who are paid to research and select new styles. "It's fun because we just come up with cool things that we like and then put them on a T-shirt," she told Rubin. "For the Instagram, the marketing team will send us out with clothes and have us take pictures with a photographer and then they'll decide what to post." Kjerstin now has 24,000 Instagram followers, up from 3,000 before she started working for Brandy Melville. Girls sometimes come into the Santa Monica store and ask to take pictures with her, she said. Another Brandy Melville employee, Alex Centomo (pictured below), now has more than 201,000 Instagram followers as a result of her work with the brand.  Most of the Brandy Melville's styles are one-size-fits-all, which has drawn some criticism. "The last thing women need is another company creating low self-esteem and body image issues," blogger Laura Zaneuth writes. "I will not support a Brandy Melville or any company that discriminates the majority of women." In an op-ed for the University of Southern California campus newspaper, student Rini Sampath wrote, "One size does not fit most. According to the Los Angeles Times, the average American woman is a size 14. The crop-tops and miniskirts that litter the shelves of Brandy Melville would barely cover the average American." But the company isn't backing down. The sizing system is core to its marketing strategy. Prominently displayed black-and-white plaquards throughout the stores read: "One size fits most." Brandy Melville's marketing is reminiscent of how Abercrombie & Fitch rose to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Abercrombie's advertising featured frolicking, half-naked co-eds, which upset many parents and made the brand even more attractive to their kids. But unlike Abercrombie, Brandy Melville's ads don't feature any men.  Here's a look inside some of the stores, from the company's Instagram account: