Will these toxic claims be terminal for this ‘soft porn’ brand?
Strutting down the catwalk in 10ft white feathered wings, thongs, basques and marabou-trimmed wisps of nothingness, Victoria’s Secret’s ‘Angels’ were a global cultural phenomenon. uniformly tall, slim and beautiful; stripped to their underwear, they were every heterosexual teenage boy’s fantasy, while their sexy high-fashion glamour appealed to women.
These were the famous faces of Victoria’s Secret and, as scantily clad ambassadors, proved instrumental in its runaway success from very humble beginnings.
The company was founded in 1977 by US businessman roy raymond, who set up a small chain of boudoir lingerie shops when he could find no man-friendly women’s stores. in 1982 he sold the company to clothing magnate Les Wexner for $1million – a fraction of its current value. raymond later committed suicide by jumping off the golden gate Bridge in San Francisco.
He chose the name Victoria after Queen Victoria, thinking it sounded refined, and added Secret to refer to what was hidden under the clothes. Marvelling at one store which looked like a Victorian ‘ brothel… with red velvet sofas’ Wexner turned the company into one of the world’s leading lingerie brands. Hundreds of stores opened coast to coast and 25million brochures were delivered, but it was the glitzy launch of Victoria’s Secret’s first blatantly sexy catwalk show at the Plaza Hotel, new York in 1995 which made the difference.
Broadcast on network TV to 185 countries, millions tuned in to see supermodels naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, tyra Banks and Karen Mulder – among others – stripped back to the barest of essentials.
Glossy, extravagant, seductive, ultrafeminine and sophisticated, it all seemed a very glamorous world away from the risque, cheap nylon, crotchless offerings sold in sex shops.
Victoria’s Secret gave its flimsy black satin g-strings names like ‘second skin’ and high price tags which never quite justified the tiny amount of material that went into making them.
Shrugging off accusations of soft porn – with designs by men, for the pleasure of men – Victoria’s Secret aimed its marketing at ‘ empowering’ women who wanted to celebrate their sexiness.
The company’s chief marketing officer Ed razek insisted the Angels were more like ‘ athletes’ or ‘ Olympians’ to whom other strong, aspirational women could relate. ninety-eight per cent of its customer base were women, he said.
How hollow those words sound now from a company struggling to adapt to a changing world and facing allegations that two of its most senior executives presided over a culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment
But back then, not only did the brand attract established models, it created stars out of unknowns.
in 1999 supermodel Heidi Klum made headlines by wearing Victoria’s Secret’s ‘Millennium Bra’ on the catwalk in new York. Worth $10million, it was dubbed ‘the world’s most expensive bikini’, featuring 3,024 stones, including 1,988 sapphires and a five- carat diamond.
Since then the ‘ fantasy’ bra has been the highlight of the Victoria’s Secret annual extravaganza, and competition is fierce from aspiring models to follow in the footsteps of top Angels gisele Bundchen, Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio.
Official brand ambassadors could earn £4million a year. For that though, they had to be at least 5ft 9in, stunningly beautiful and maintain the required 34- 24- 34 physique. One Angel, who’d recently given birth, described as ‘torture’ the liquid diet and exercise regime she endured to get into shape.
in the nineties, celebrity endorsements rolled in. tennis star Andre Agassi was said to have treated his then wife, film star Brooke Shields, to a pair of white panties (VS never called them knickers).
Academy-winning actress nicole Kidman was reported to have delighted her then husband, tom Cruise, by wearing some of the company’s raunchy underwear. Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio is reported to have dated at least ten Victoria’s Secret Angels, and British movie star Orlando Bloom was married to Kerr, from whom he got divorced in 2013.
Music stars such as Katy Perry and taylor Swift performed at company shows and in 2004 Bob Dylan even agreed to take part in its tV commercial.
Victoria’s Secret opened its first flagship store in London’s Bond Street in 2012, and staged its first catwalk show in 2014, featuring Ed Sheeran as star turn, but recent years have been more challenging and the company scrapped last year’s show amid claims its marketing is over-sexualised.
With consumers turning away from glamour towards comfort, plus a huge backlash following reports of Wexner’s historic friendship with disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein, Victoria’s Secret is facing something close to an identity crisis.
Even some of its own Angels have questioned the company’s ethos and obsession with the ‘perfect body’ rather than the current trend for diversity and real people of different gender, shape, size and ethnicity.
Californian model Kylie Bisutti quit in 2012, claiming that – at 5ft 10in and weighing just 8st – she was told she looked like a ‘fat cow’. She said: ‘i was being paid to strip down and pose provocatively to titillate men. it wasn’t about modelling clothes any more. i felt like a piece of meat.’
in 2015 British model Jourdan Dunn broke the news on twitter that she had pulled out of the runway show with the words ‘Feeling so much better about not doing BS ... sorry i mean VS now that rihanna isn’t doing it also.’ the latter has launched Savage X Fenty, which offers consumers her own brand of lingerie for empowered women.
In 2017 Brazilian model Adriana Lima, a Victoria’s Secret Angel since 1999, caused a stir when she announced on social media that she would not take her clothes off any more ‘for an empty cause’.
One month after appearing in her 18th Victoria’s Secret runway show – live-streamed from Shanghai to almost 70 million people across the globe – she wrote: ‘Every day in my life i wake up thinking, how do i look? i thought that’s not a way of living and beyond that … that’s not physically and mentally healthy.’
Wexner, 82, chief executive of the lingerie giant’s parent company L Brands, is reported to be set to sell the controversial brand and step aside from his retail empire. razek has resigned, and Victoria’s Secret is looking to rebrand, having at last woken up to the fact the world around it has changed.
Will the Angels now be hanging up their wings for good?