Victoria’s sad secret: Pricey bras not $exy

Sometimes, the sexiest lingerie is the cheapest lingerie.

That’s the tough lesson Victoria’s Secret learned during the holidays as a discount deal caused an unexpected stampede into its stores that slashed the company’s average selling prices so much that revenue dipped.

In November, Victoria’s Secret handed out $20 reward cards to customers who spent $40 or more at its stores.

The card were redeemable in December — if you spent $40.

But the embattled lingerie behemoth soon found out that customers were looking for bargains and not its pricey, constructed bras that sell for north of $60 each.

One retail analyst said the discount card wrre most likely used to buy already discounted pajamas or bras.

Because of the reward cards, sales ended up dipping 1 percent in December.

“Their promotion worked too well,” Nomura-Instinet analyst Simeon Siegel told The Post. “If price gets you in the door, people want your product but at the right price.”

Execs at L Brands, the Columbus, Ohio, parent of Victoria’s Secret, admitted as much to a standing-room-only crowd of investors at a retailing conference in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday.

“We don’t have our new promotional playbook nailed down,” L Brands Chief Financial Officer Stuart Burgdoerfer said. “We tested the promotion, and it still surprised us.”

Sales of Victoria’s Secret gift cards over the holiday season were also down “somewhat” from a year earlier, Burgdoerfer said.

Meanwhile, rival American Eagle reported that its holiday sales were up 8 percent, fueled in part by its fast-growing lower-price intimate apparel brand Aerie.

Victoria’s Secret’s plan to lure traffic by offering holiday reward-cards worked a little too well. The discounts helped drive sales down 1 percent in December, as they t slashed selling s prices. Meanwhile, rival lingerie purveyor Aerie helped parent...