The rise, fall, and latest stumbles of Victoria’s Secret ahead of its fashion show return

Inspired by an uncomfortable trip to a department store to buy underwear for his wife, Raymond set out to create a place where men would feel comfortable shopping for lingerie. He wanted to create a women’s underwear shop that was targeted at men.  

His vision was summed up by Slate’s Naomi Barr in 2013: “Raymond imagined a Victorian boudoir, replete with dark wood, oriental rugs, and silk drapery. He chose the name ‘Victoria’ to evoke the propriety and respectability associated with the Victorian era; outwardly refined, Victoria’s ‘secrets’ were hidden beneath.”

He went on to open a handful of Victoria’s Secret stores and launched its famous catalog. 

Wexner, who founded L Brands (formerly Limited Brands) was already making a name for himself in the retail world as he gradually built up an impressive empire.

By June 1982, Limited — which had previously acquired Express and Lane Bryant — was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. One month later, under Wexner’s leadership, the company acquired Victoria’s Secret’s six stores and its catalog for $1 million. 

He was closely following the European lingerie market of that time and wanted to bring this aesthetic to the US. So, he set out to create a more affordable version of the European upscale brand “La Perla” — lingerie that looked luxurious and expensive but was affordable.  

Source: The Telegraph

The show, which was run by Ed Razek (longtime chief marketing officer of L Brands), became an iconic part of the brand’s image. 

Razek and his team were responsible for hand-picking the models to walk the show. Because of this, he became one of the most important people in the modeling world, helping to launch the careers of Gisele Bündchen, Tyra Banks, and Heidi Klum.

Source: Time

Body by Victoria was a “blockbuster success” and more than doubled the sales volume of any other bra that Victoria’s Secret had previously launched, Michael Silverstein wrote in his book, “Trading Up.”

It was tradition for an Angel to wear a Fantasy Bra” at every runway show starting in 1996. They changed each year.

Razek hired the best photographers and television directors in the world to make commercials for the brand. 

According to reports at the time, Turney wanted to remove the “hooker looks” in the catalog and made the aesthetic more like Vogue than Playboy.

Under her nine-year tenure, the company thrived; sales increased by 70% to $7.7 billion.

Wexner made a series of quick and fast changes: killing the catalog, swimwear, and apparel to focus solely on lingerie, the core part of its business.

He also split the brand into three — Victoria’s Secret Lingerie, Victoria’s Secret Beauty, and Pink — and recruited a CEO for each division.

Singer spent over a decade at Nike and was CEO of Spanx before she joined Victoria’s Secret. 

Victoria’s Secret was slow to adjust to a shift from padded and push-up bras toward bralettes and sports bras, missing out on a major fashion trend. 

Victoria’s Secret was accused of failing to adapt to the times. Between 2016 and 2018, its market share in the US dropped from 33% to 24%. Some shoppers complained that the quality of its underwear had slipped.

“We believe Pink is on the precipice of collapse,” Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote in a note to investors in March 2018, commenting on the level of promotions in store.

Some parents complained that Pink was being brought down by Victoria’s Secret’s over-sexualized ads.

In November 2018, Ed Razek, then-chief marketing officer of L Brands, made controversial comments about transgender and plus-size models.

“It’s a 42-minute entertainment special. That’s what it is,” he said in the interview.

Razek made a formal apology online but some of his critics called for him to step down. 

Singer was replaced by John Mehas, who took over the role at the start of 2019.

Mehas had his work cut out for him. Same-store sales at Victoria’s Secret were down 3% in 2018, and the retailer was gradually losing market share to new companies. 

Plus, he had angry shareholders to deal with. In March 2019, activist shareholder Barington Capital sent a letter to Wexner, laying out recommendations to improve growth at Victoria’s Secret and called out the company’s brand image as being “outdated.”

It seems Victoria’s Secret took this criticism to heart. After acknowledging the letter in a statement, it appointed two new female board directors — Sarah E. Nash and Anne Sheehan — and made steps to address the comments about the brand image being outdated. 

While she is not a plus-size model, fans praised the company for its decision to take on Hungarian model Barbara Palvin as one of its newest Angels.

Instagrammers celebrated a post starring Palvin for being more body-inclusive, as they perceived her to be curvier than some of the brand’s other models.

“This model actually looks healthy..& I’m loving it!” one Instagram user wrote.

Brazilian transgender model Valentina Sampaio, shared a photograph of herself on Instagram in August 2019, tagging the Victoria’s Secret Pink brand along with the hashtags: “campaign,” “vspink,” and “diversity.”A day later, she shared a video of herself with the caption “Never stop dreaming.”

Her agent later confirmed that she had signed a contract with Victoria’s Secret. Sampaio is expected to hit the runway for the 2024 show.

“Today Is the day!!! Finally after 6 years since my first VS casting, today the dream will come true,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

Razek ran the fashion show, so its future seemed unclear at the time of his departure. 

At the time, L Brands CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer told analysts that the fashion show didn’t have a big impact on boosting sales at the brand. 

Epstein managed Wexner’s money for several years, and former company executives told the Wall Street Journal that he tried to meddle in Victoria’s Secret’s business, offering input on which women should be models.

Some of Epstein’s victims came forward saying that he used his connection to Victoria’s Secret to coerce them into sexual acts.

L Brands’ board of directors announced that it had hired an outside law firm to review its relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in August 2019.

In September, Wexner addressed his ties to Epstein at L Brands’ investor meeting. “At some point in your life we are all betrayed by friends,” Wexner said. “Being taken advantage of by someone who was so sick, so cunning, so depraved, is something that I’m embarrassed I was even close to. But that is in the past.”

Still, he’d stay on as chairman emeritus and sit on the board of directors. At the same time, it announced that it was selling a 55% stake in Victoria’s Secret to private-equity firm Sycamore Partners.

In a statement to the press announcing the news, Wexner said that Sycamore has “deep experience in the retail industry and a superior track record of success,” and that it “will bring a fresh perspective and greater focus to the business.”

In April 2020, Sycamore filed a lawsuit to back out of the deal, alleging that Victoria’s Secret’s actions taken during the pandemic to close stores, cut back on new inventory, and not pay rent for the month of April were in violation of the agreement that the two parties had made in February.

L Brands immediately issued a statement saying that a termination of the agreement is “invalid,” and that it would “vigorously defend” the lawsuit and “pursue all legal remedies to enforce its contractual rights.”

L Brands said that it had come to a “mutual agreement” with Sycamore to “terminate” the deal.

The company also said that it had reshuffled its management team and would focus on “implementing significant cost reduction actions and performance improvements at Victoria’s Secret.”

This included permanently closing as many as 250 Victoria’s Secret and Pink stores in the US and Canada in 2020.

Jefferies analysts described Victoria’s Secret’s progress as “admirable” after it reported strong fourth-quarter earnings in early 2021. 

Bloomberg later reported that L Brands had resumed discussions to sell the brand once more and was seeking a much higher valuation in the region of $3 billion.

But in May of that year, L Brands put an end to speculation and said that it was no longer looking for a buyer and would split the company in two and spin off Victoria’s Secret to become a standalone business.

It overhauled its brand image – swapping its Angels for a new group of activists and entrepreneurial women to be the face of the brand.

The series delved into Wexner’s ties with Jeffrey Epstein and said that questions remained about the nature of their relationship.

It also began selling Victoria’s Secret beauty products and underwear on Amazon. 

The company is constantly innovating “in all spheres of the business,” a spokesperson for Victoria’s Secret previously told Business Insider, adding: “This will lead us into new spaces like reclaiming one of our best marketing and entertainment properties to date and turning it on its head to reflect who we are today.”

By fall 2023, the retailer said it would release a “reimagined version” of its Victoria’s Secret fashion show in the form of a movie, alongside a live fashion event.

“This film is the ultimate expression of the Victoria’s Secret brand transformation,” Raúl Martinez, creative director at Victoria’s Secret, said in a statement. “It will be driven by fashion, glamour, and entertainment with a nod to beloved iconography from the past but in a bold, redefined way.”

In July 2023, supermodel Bella Hadid announced her participation in a Victoria’s Secret campaign on her Instagram, a post that attracted a mixed-bag of responses online. Some online commenters said the campaign was “perpetuating body dysmorphia to young women” while others defended the campaign.

In August 2023, Victoria’s Secret debuted a campaign that featured Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, and Adriana Lima, alongside other supermodels from the late ’90s and early 2000s as well as newer faces to the modeling scene.

The brand also traded in its “Angels ” label, though, and named its campaign “The Icon” — similarly titled to a Skims campaign from the year before titled “Icons.” The similarities didn’t end there: both campaigns included Victoria’s Secret models from earlier eras, and both included photos with comparable overexposed lighting and editing styles. 

The show received mixed reactions. Although Victoria’s Secret was praised for its attempt to appeal to a wider audience, it lacked one important aspect for a fashion show: a runway.

Instead, the live fashion event was a premiere, of sorts, for the film released on Prime Video days later. 

As Gen Z continues its obsession with the early 2000s, the styles of that time are making full-fledged comebacks. From ballet flats to trucker hats, Gen Z shoppers are searching for the y2k aesthetic.

Victoria’s Secret reported that its quarterly operating income grew for the first time since 2021 in second quarter earnings report for 2024.

Models arrived Tuesday morning to begin prepping for the live runway. The show will feature musical guests and a runway presentation — similar to how it was done before the 2019 cancellation.