Fatphobia. Transphobia. Aligned with a convicted sex offender. These are just some of the merit-based accusations hurled at Victoria’s Secret over the last 12 months, a company that arguably invented the category of women’s mass-market lingerie some 42 years ago and seems to be teetering on the brink of irrelevance.
The woes began in November 2018, when L. Brands’ chief marketing officer Ed Razek gave a telling interview to Vogue (Victoria’s Secret is the flagship brand under fashion retailer L. Brands’s portfolio) offering an ill-advised explanation for why the show lacked plus-size and transgender models on its runway. “Because the show is a fantasy,” he said at one point, implying that trans or plus-size people could not be a subject of fantasy.
This led to headlines like “Victoria’s Secret Doesn’t Want Plus-Size or Trans Women Walking the Runway” and massive outcry from both within and outside the industry. Nonetheless, the show went on. (Razek eventually apologized but did not include any mention of plus-size women.) By February, more bad news was on the way, beginning with the announcement of a string of store closures. In March, shareholder Barington Capital sent a letter to L Brands’s chief executive Leslie H. Wexner with one notably scathing line: “Victoria’s Secret’s brand image is starting to appear to many as being outdated and even a bit ‘tone deaf’ by failing to be aligned with women’s evolving attitudes towards beauty, diversity, and inclusion,” he wrote.
Then in July, the New York Times ran a story: “How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women.” In it, Wexner’s friendship and questionable business ties to Epstein were unearthed. The brand’s bad turn continued: Sales were on the decline. Razek announced his retirement. And, finally, on November 21, the tentpole Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was canceled after 24 years.
“No One’s Gonna Miss The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show,” BuzzFeed’s Scaachi Koul wrote in response. “[Rihanna] and her gang of ‘savages’ have officially left the Angels in the dust,” wrote British Vogue on Twitter. Even Bette Midler weighed in, writing: “The annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show isn’t happening this holiday season. If you still want lots of breasts & wings, you’re gonna have to order a bucket of chicken.”
It’s tempting to look at this as a victory, as many are. It’s easy to craft a narrative that draws a red line between the brand’s unapologetically discriminatory practices and their recent decline. But that would be oversimplifying things. That the show existed for 24 years without once featuring a plus-size or out transgender model shows a dexterous commitment to stuborness and ignorance, and the cancellation of its very expensive fashion show should not be mistaken as the development of a conscious.
“I think the bad press maybe took away 10% of their sales at best, but controversies tend to not affect a business’s bottom line — just look at Facebook for crying out loud,” says Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at the market research company Forrester Research. For instance, despite a 2% sales decline, L. Brands still raked in $2.68 billion, according to the company’s recent earnings report. (For comparison, Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty has an annual revenue of $150 million.) The company sits so high up on the mountain that even a dramatic tumble still situates them stratospheres above their competitors.
