Something Navy CEO Denies Rumors Surrounding Company
Matthew Scanlan, chief executive officer of Something Navy, on Wednesday categorically denied allegations of financial irregularities at the company.
Rumors had been spreading on the internet Tuesday and Wednesday that Brandon Charnas, who is married to Arielle Charnas, founder of Something Navy, had allegedly been involved in some financial impropriety.
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“This is categorically false,” said Scanlan. “Brandon Charnas does not have access to company bank accounts. He is not an employee of the company, and he has no access points,” he said.
Rumors were also flying over the internet and Reddit that Brandon and Arielle Charnas were divorcing.
A story was expected to come out about the state of the company in Business Insider Thursday. In the end, that story did not contain any information related to the alleged financial irregularities or the Charnas marriage.
Brandon Charnas’ real estate company also denied there was any alleged financial impropriety at their company.
“Brandon Charnas is a cofounder of Current Real Estate. There has been no embezzlement at Current Real Estate,” said a spokeswoman for the real estate company.
The couple has three daughters.
As for the internet rumors that Arielle and Brandon Charnas were getting a divorce, a spokeswoman for Arielle Charnas said, “This is patently false. They are happily married and in love.”
Later in the day, a letter purporting to be from Charnas was posted on the internet discussing how she plans to move forward.
“This letter is fake. All of these rumors are fake. Arielle and Brandon are happily married, there was absolutely no embezzlement. This is all part of a disgusting, coordinated smear campaign attempting to damage Arielle and Brandon’s reputations and lives,” said a spokeswoman for Arielle and Brandon Charnas.
It was later discovered that the letter was written by Julie Pollack Belz, a PR woman unrelated to the company who sent it to her friends and thought it would be a “solid PR statement from Arielle/Something Navy.” Belz later posted, “I am sorry this may have caused (even more) unnecessary stress for the Charnas family. I certainly did not mean for my casual text, to some of my pop-culture obsessed friends, to go viral.”
Arielle Charnas, who began as an influencer and founded Something Navy in 2009, has been embroiled in controversy before. The company received backlash early in the pandemic when Arielle Charnas shared a series of Instagram posts showing her taking a COVID-19 test, which she secured through personal connections at a time when New York was limiting them to those exhibiting specific baseline symptoms, which Charnas didn’t seem to meet. After testing positive, she then shirked shelter-in-place mandates and left New York City to self-isolate in the Hamptons, which angered social media users, as reported. Charnas has 1.3 million followers on Instagram.
After an exclusive apparel partnership with Nordstrom (where at one point the line’s popularity crashed nordstrom.com) ended in 2019, Something Navy became a stand-alone fashion brand in 2020 and currently does e-commerce, wholesale and retail. Its products range from women’s wear, kids’ apparel, accessories and swimwear to homeware. Among its wholesale accounts are Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Intermix, Revolve and Shopbop. The company has four stores in Newport Beach and Los Angeles, California, and two in New York City.
In October, Something Navy hired Betty Wang as its first president, as reported.
Something Navy’s investors are Beliead Ventures, L Catterton, Vanterra Capital, Box Group, Jenny Fleiss, Silas Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, SWAT Equity, Black Jays Ventures and The Seed Lab, among others.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information and the exact content of the Business Insider story.
