Love Island 2021 star Brett Staniland has thrown major shade Molly-Mae Hague's way, a week after protesting outside her PrettyLittleThing catwalk show.
During a recent appearance on Murad Merali's #ImOverIt podcast, Brett spilled all the tea on why he attended the protest and hit out at PrettyLittleThing for appointing Molly-Mae as a creative director.
"The term creative director... above you is just the CEO. You're someone who creates the direction of the brand and it's in the messaging, it's in the storytelling, it's in what kind of clothes you're going to produce. To get to that point, you are designer first, you've made clothes with your hands and you've been to school for years to studied that and done internships and all that," he said.
Brett continued, "That process takes years and years and years to get to get the top as creative director at a brand like that...", before Murad interjected, "So to get it like that is just privilege, privilege, privilege," as the reality star nodded.
"But I can understand why, because they're engines for each other. The Molly-Mae engine becomes the PLT and BooHoo engine, who then creates more influencers for the Molly-Mae engine and they just work so well together."
Molly-Mae Hague helmed PrettyLittleThing's first-ever catwalk show last Wednesday (16 February) and while the show was a massive success – with the likes of Tommy Fury, Maura Higgins and Ellie Brown supporting her from the front row – the night didn’t go off without controversy as protestors gathered outside.
A protest was staged outside The Londoner Hotel, where PLT’s show was being held, to campaign for sustainability and higher pay for the brand’s factory workers. According to reports, a group of around 20 people gathered outside the venue holding signs and shouting into microphones.
Among the protestors was Brett, who was seen holding a sign which said, “There’s nothing ‘pretty’ about wage theft.”
One onlooker told The Sun, “I was so shocked to see Brett here - he went on a show sponsored by fast fashion.
“But he was there holding a sign saying 'Pretty Little Thief' and shouting about how ‘shameful’ it was we were all in attendance. He was shaking his head as people filed into the event."
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Brett himself works in the fashion industry as a model alongside his twin brother Scott and regularly campaigns for a more sustainable approach to fashion. Following the protest, he tweeted, “Thanks to those who came and supported the protest last night with @venetialamanna @OhSoEthical and I. Boohoo Group don’t care about the planet or people. They care about money and get it through exploitation.”
Speaking to Vogue after he left the villa last August, Brett said, “I love supporting British brands and ones that are doing their best with being responsible and ethical. I have really strong views on fast fashion, so I stuck to wearing only my own clothes throughout my time with the show -which all in all was actually four-plus weeks - despite drops of huge duffel bags with lots of clothes from the show’s partners that would come every couple of days.
“There was so much stuff! I think I might be the first Islander to say no to all of that? I did actually talk to the other Islanders about the overconsumption conversations and sustainability - it was definitely the first time a lot of them had heard about it.”
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Although PrettyLittleThing have come under fire for promoting fast fashion in the past, Molly-Mae recently revealed that brand have plans to adopt a more sustainable approach including a Marketplace app to encourage customers to sell on items of clothing after wearing them.
She told Closer online, "It's basically going to be an app in which girls can resell their PLT pieces pre-loved and it's not going to be just PLT pieces, you can sell pretty much anything on there, which is obviously encouraging sustainability hugely.
"It's encouraging girls to think: 'Maybe this is actually really great condition, I don't need to chuck it away. Why not encourage someone else to buy it?'"