Aisling O’Loughlin: The secret of Victoria’s failure
‘It’s a fantasy that has become so tiresome and out of touch’
Knickers to ignoring us all these years, Victoria’s Secret. If you’d just done what we’d politely suggested, you wouldn’t be in this mess of downward sales and the lowest rating fashion show ever, with the fembot extravaganza now canned.
It’s the same thing we’ve been telling Leonardo di Caprio all these years. Victoria’s Secret models are boring. They only represent Victoria’s Secret models.
Now Rihanna is prancing all over town like the Queen of Knockers and Nips as if she’s liberated womankind with her mantra, ‘All are welcome at Fenty.’ Duh! Why has it taken so long to welcome in the rest of us civilians who aren’t six foot of lean muscle who work out non-stop on a diet of diddly?
It makes you wonder about all these highly educated suits in the boardroom assessing graphs, adjusting their glasses to report after report of declining sales while the whole body-positivity movement takes over social media. I mean, it was no secret – the key to reclaiming some relevence for Victoria’s Secret is to throw in a few wobbly bits, a few scars, a few tattoos, some short hair and welcome in the transgender crew for crying out loud.
Basically apply the all-inclusive formula, business-for-beginners approach that Rihanna used for her Savage X Fenty show earlier this year. There was nothing to lose for Victoria’s Secret. The brand would have been hailed as ‘groundbreaking’, like they were doing us a favour, even if it’s pretty obvious to celebrate all body shapes if you’re in the underwear game.
‘You like frilly knickers and padded bras? Come this way. It doesn’t matter if it’s for your teddy bear or your alter ego, we’ve got the size for you,’ surely should have been the idea.
Instead, Ed Razek, the then-chief marketing officer for L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, rejected the inclusion of transgender models with the zinger, ‘the show is a fantasy’. A fantasy that had become tiresome and out of touch, but, hey, a fantasy nonetheless. Even the stars of the show – the Victoria’s Secret models – began distancing themselves from the brand. Karlie Kloss told Vogue she ‘didn’t feel it was an image that was truly reflective of who I am and the kind of message I want to send to young women around the world about what it means to be beautiful’.
Former Victoria’s Secret “angel” Bella Hadid claimed walking in her smalls for Fenty was the first time she felt sexy, unlike ‘other lingerie shows’. Bella certainly never looked too shy all trussed up like a showgirl for the Victoria’s Secret show pony fest.
Anyway, all of this upset could have been avoided if the suits had just listened to their audience. Now all that’s left of the brand are angel feathers in the wind and truckloads of lingerie to offload – the alpha male dream a bitter disappointment after such a rapturous fantasy.