When it comes to lingerie, Victoria’s Secret is the brand that everyone knows. The retailer’s annual fashion show is a rite of passage for teen girls who buy their first bras, and its models — era-defining bombshells like Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Gisele Bundchen — have become household names. Yet over the past few years, Victoria’s Secret has struggled with accusations of a toxic work culture and lack of body inclusivity in its advertising campaigns. And, as young women opted for on-trend competitors like Savage X Fenty and Parade, the company found itself battling a dwindling revenue stream.
Fortunately, Victoria’s Secret is working to reverse the trend. This year’s fashion show was a triumph for the retailer: It featured more women of diverse shapes and sizes, including plus-size models Paloma Elsesser and Ashley Graham, and transgender model Valentina Sampaio. And the company’s new campaign, which features soccer player Megan Rapinoe and other models who are openly gay, is a bold step in the right direction.
But the brand still has a lot of ground to make up if it wants to win back a skeptic audience, which is why the company’s CEO has promised that “Victoria’s Secret will not be defined by its past.” And that future might look more like the current VS Pink campaign, which features a diverse cast of women in a variety of styles, all while the band The Chainsmokers plays their heart-thumping hit ‘Everytime You Go Away’.
The campaign is aimed to show that the brand is more than just a catalogue of skinny, tanned models who wear push-up bras and wink at men watching them from the balcony. The brand is also focusing on its swimwear and activewear offerings, two categories that it exited in recent years. It also intends to improve its line of loungewear, sweaters and pyjamas.
The VS Pink campaign is being led by two veteran fashion journalists, Fernandez and Sherman. The pair have a deep understanding of the business: they worked for the company in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was run by founder Les Wexner. They chronicle the story of the company from its founding in 1977, when it was named after Queen Victoria in reference to the taboo/hidden nature of lingerie and underwear at the time, to Wexner’s rapid expansion in the early and mid-1990s, and the company’s rise to global dominance under his leadership in the decade that followed.
The pair also explore the fall from grace, with allegations of a toxic workplace and links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. They examine how the brand was able to overcome these challenges to become one of the world’s most lucrative lingerie chains, but ultimately found itself facing mounting pressure over the image it perpetuates. It was this pressure that eventually drove Wexner to retire in 2019, and led to a massive rebranding effort. Now, the question is whether that effort will be enough to save the company.