Brandy Melville, a popular retailer known for its one size approach to clothing, is opening a location in downtown Naperville this summer.
Filling a spot in the Main Street Promenade at 50 S. Main St., it will mark the company’s second store in Illinois and first suburban location in the Chicago area. The brand’s other Illinois-based store is in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
For Naperville, Brandy Melville is the latest in a series of retail chains that have moved into the city’s downtown. Earlier this year saw the opening of Lilly Pulitzer, Free People and its athleisure counterpart FP Movement. California-based clothing brand Vuori is to open in the spot formerly occupied by Eddie Bauer later this year.
“Brandy Melville will fill an important niche for teen and young adult shoppers and will further strengthen our retail mix and appeal to younger visitors and their families,” said Katie Wood, executive director of the Downtown Naperville Alliance.
It will be filling the space where Michael Graham Salon and Spa had been located, she said. The salon closed their downtown shop about two years ago but still has a location in south Naperville.
Brandy Melville was founded in Italy in the 1980s by Silvio Marsan and his son Stephan. The name Brandy Melville is based on a fictional story about an American girl, Brandy, who falls in love with an Englishman, Melville, in Italy.
In 2009, the first U.S. Brandy Melville store opened in Westwood, a Los Angeles neighborhood where UCLA is located. The store gained popularity among young girls for its laid-back, beachy aesthetic and since then has built something of a cult following. It now has dozens of stores across the U.S. as well as in Australia, England and China.
Common Brandy Melville clothing items include spaghetti strap tank tops, cropped T-shirts and short, flowy dresses. Shirts typically range from $14 to $30 while dresses range from $28 to $35, according to store’s website.
The brand has also received backlash for its one size fits all approach to clothing, which was later changed to one size fits most. Critics have said that Brandy Melville’s clothing, which typically fit an American extra small or small, encourages unhealthy body standards, especially among teenage girls. The clothing brand was the subject of a 2024 HBO documentary, where former employees described a toxic work environment and a pressure to maintain a certain body type.
cstein@chicagotribune.com
