A dynamic, fair-minded chronicle of the rise and fall of Victoria’s Secret.
An investigation of the ups and downs of an iconic American brand.
Sherman and Fernandez bring extensive journalistic experience inside the fashion industry to their examination of Victoria’s Secret, a business and brand that had a significant effect on the concept of female sexuality for several decades. The company began as a struggling retail chain that was taken over by charismatic executive Les Wexner, who was quick to realize that in the 1980s, women were ready to splurge on intimate apparel sold in pretty, energetic, colorful stores in malls. He led the company to remarkable heights and turned it into a cultural icon. The annual Angels show, featuring supermodels in glittery undergarments, became a key event of the fashion calendar. The company was marketing sexiness—or, rather, a hyped-up version of sexiness—with a large dose of commercialized fantasy mixed in. However, as the authors show, success contained the seeds of failure. Wexner failed to understand the rise of social media, and the company was a latecomer to online shopping. Younger women blamed the company for reinforcing stereotypes, and a series of revelations about the misogynistic culture behind the scenes created more problems. The company took another major hit when Wexner was associated with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his former financial manager. The authors are unsure about the extent of the damage from the Epstein scandal, but it certainly did not help a company that was already reeling. Wexner tried to recast the company's image for a new era, but nothing worked. “In the years since Les walked away…the brand’s sales have gotten better, then worse, then mostly settled into a state of slow and steady decline,” write the authors—though it still owns “18 percent of the intimates market share” in the U.S.
A dynamic, fair-minded chronicle of the rise and fall of Victoria’s Secret.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781250850966
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.
The veteran newscaster reflects on her triumphs and hardships, both professional and private.
In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Couric (b. 1957) transforms the events of her long, illustrious career into an immensely readable story—a legacy-preserving exercise, for sure, yet judiciously polished and insightful, several notches above the fray of typical celebrity memoirs. The narrative unfolds through a series of lean chapters as she recounts the many career ascendency steps that led to her massively successful run on the Today Show and comparably disappointing stints as CBS Evening News anchor, talk show host, and Yahoo’s Global News Anchor. On the personal front, the author is candid in her recollections about her midlife adventures in the dating scene and deeply sorrowful and affecting regarding the experience of losing her husband to colon cancer as well as the deaths of other beloved family members, including her sister and parents. Throughout, Couric maintains a sharp yet cool-headed perspective on the broadcast news industry and its many outsized personalities and even how her celebrated role has diminished in recent years. “It’s AN ADJUSTMENT when the white-hot spotlight moves on,” she writes. “The ego gratification of being the It girl is intoxicating (toxic being the root of the word). When that starts to fade, it takes some getting used to—at least it did for me.” Readers who can recall when network news coverage and morning shows were not only relevant, but powerfully influential forces will be particularly drawn to Couric’s insights as she tracks how the media has evolved over recent decades and reflects on the negative effects of the increasing shift away from reliable sources of informed news coverage. The author also discusses recent important cultural and social revolutions, casting light on issues of race and sexual orientation, sexism, and the predatory behavior that led to the #MeToo movement. In that vein, she expresses her disillusionment with former co-host and friend Matt Lauer.
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53586-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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