SELLING SEXY

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.