Home
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
/
Can a troubled Victoria’s Secret successfully write its next chapter?
It’s certainly pulling out all the stops
By Tara John, CNN
Updated:
7:27 AM EDT, Wed October 16, 2024
Source: CNN
The message on Tuesday night in Brooklyn was simple: after a six-year
hiatus, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is back, and the lingerie
brand’s future is being shaped by women.
The presence of the female gaze was felt throughout the evening with a
production that featured an all-women musical lineup, and a diverse
cast of models wearing more sophisticated — and in some cases, more
comfortable-looking lingerie, including leggings and sheer coverups.
Lisa from K-pop supergroup Blackpink kicked off the event with an
opening performance, and Gigi Hadid rose from the stage floor on a
catwalk that looked like the love child of the “Barbie” movie set
and an ’80s video game. Hadid, along with other models, wore the
brand’s signature angel wings (this year, faux feather versions were
PETA-approved).
There appeared to be more Brown and Black faces on the runway than at
any time in the show’s history, many of whom wore natural hairstyles,
as well as some plus-sized and older models walking.
The crowd screamed as Adriana Lima — one of the original Victoria’s
Secret “Angels” — charged down the runway alongside some of
fashion’s most in-demand models: Bella Hadid, Alex Consani and Paloma
Elsesser. Kate Moss, who turned 50 in January, made her Victoria’s
Secret Fashion Show debut, with her daughter Lila also modeling.
Then there was Cher, the undisputed highlight of the evening, who
delivered a show-stealing performance of “Believe” and “Strong
Enough.” Fashion journalist Roxanne Robinson told CNN: “the models
could have been naked, and no one would have noticed.”
‘Work in progress’
For decades, Victoria’s Secret was the self-proclaimed sexy, becoming
ubiquitous in American malls in the 1990s with popular products like
the “Miracle” pushup bra. The brand defined femininity with barely
covered supermodels in catalogs and campaigns as well as on its annual
catwalk.
First streamed online in 1999, then televised in 2001, the Victoria’s
Secret Fashion Show became a sex-charged spectacle of lingerie watched
by millions in 200 countries at its peak, with performances by
Destiny’s Child, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.
But its time-worn playbook — of largely White, rail-thin models —
lost its luster in the late 2010s. The brand found itself fending off
accusations of sexism, ageism and a refusal to cater to women of all
shapes and sizes, particularly following inflammatory about transgender
and plus-size models made by a marketing executive at its then-parent
company, L Brands, in 2018.
By that year, the fashion show’s viewership had already , from 9.7
million in 2013 to 3.3 million. At the same time, new brands like
Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, took bites out of Victoria’s Secret’s
market domination by inclusive sizing and more diverse casting in its
campaigns and events.
In 2019, L Brands, canceled the show indefinitely, but last year,
Victoria’s Secret (now a publicly traded company) attempted to revive
the format through the “Victoria’s Secret: The Tour,” which
spotlit four collections by independent designers and artists from
Lagos, Bogotá, London and Tokyo. Narrated by Gigi Hadid, the film
features models such as Naomi Campbell, Quannah Chasinghorse and Winnie
Harlow. Two years earlier, the brand tried trading “angels” for
“ambassadors,” giving the new roles to soccer player Megan Rapinoe
and actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
“I think the last couple years have been marked by a bunch of
different attempts of throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks,
and as a result the messaging is a bit muddled,” said fashion and
beauty journalist Chantal Fernandez, who charted the rise and
unraveling of the lingerie giant in the new book “Selling Sexy”
with co-author Lauren Sherman.
For a company known for its upbeat and glamorous visual language and
tone, “suddenly, their imagery looked like any other mall brand…
and I think part of it was not having a clear idea of how to modernize
this idea of what is sexy now, which is a really tricky question
today,” she added in a video interview with CNN.
Tuesday’s multi-racial, -size and -generational cast is Victoria’s
Secret’s latest pitch at a rebrand, while bringing back some of the
kitsch and camp of the once iconic show, now streamed live on its
social media platforms instead of heavily edited as a television
special.
Sarah Sylvester, Victoria’s Secret executive vice president of
marketing, called it an acknowledgement of “the parts of our DNA that
we love and that are important to us, and realizing that we also are
able to evolve and be more modern and more inclusive,” she told CNN
in a video call ahead of the show.
accused the brand’s efforts to project an image of inclusion as being
inauthentic. When asked whether the show was a way to address the
negative headlines since 2019, its chief design and creative officer,
Janie Schaffer, replied: “Yes, in short, absolutely.”
She said that Victoria’s Secret was listening to their customers, who
wanted the show to return. “Our customer is crying out for the
show,” she said, adding that they are well-placed to deliver it with
Victoria’s Secret’s “group of really experienced, strong women in
the business that can really get the balance of the brand right.”
But did Victoria’s Secret gambit work? It may be too soon to tell,
but early indications suggest the show hit the right tone.
Seeing Tyra Banks was “very nostalgic for me,” said celebrity
stylist Law Roach. Banks, who closed the show, wore a formfitting
bodice and leggings and silver cape. “I think it is a work in
progress, right?” he said of the company’s attempted rebrand,
before adding: “It is a good start.”
In the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Duggal Greenhouse, where the show took
place, former Victoria’s Secret Angels walked the runway alongside
models whose body types, age and sizing were not represented by the
brand a decade ago.
Ashley Graham — a plus size model and body positivity advocate —
made her Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show debut wearing a black lace
body suit, sheer robe and wings with golden flower accents. She told
People that she was excited at the show’s “full representation”
and that the brand accommodated her request to wear more.
“The first thing they gave me was this tiny, tiny little underwear,
and I said, ‘Hello, I just had three children,’” she told the
magazine exclusively. “Even though it was like two years ago, but I
was like, ‘Is there any more we can put on?’ So then I got a
bodysuit and I feel really sexy in it, and then when the wings came
out, that’s when I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I feel like an Angel. This
is hot.’”
Falling out of favor
Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by American businessman Roy
Raymond, and was bought by billionaire Leslie Wexner five years later
in 1982 for $1 million. By the early 1990s, the brand generated $1
billion in annual revenue and became an American lingerie empire,
having deftly shifted its marketing message and product through the
culturally conservative Reagan years to the ’90s and ’00s where
sexuality was increasingly commercialized.
“The brand is a window into the American consumer psyche,” Sherman
explained in a video interview. Its marketing campaigns were incredibly
effective in taking the magic and mystique of high fashion and making
it “more approachable, more commercialized,” Fernandez added.
But earlier iterations of the fashion show were often peppered with
inappropriate jokes at the models’ expense, with its in-studio
audience being largely made up of gawping men.
In its 2009 show, a personal trainer is seen critiquing the bodies of
girls aspiring to become Victoria’s Secret catwalk models. After one
of the contestants tells him she likes “everything” about her body,
he replies to the camera: “she is in for a rude awakening.”
But while the brand was increasingly for promoting an unhealthy beauty
standard, it was also generating billions in sales at its height in the
mid-2010s, and accounted for than half of the US lingerie store market,
according to Sherman and Fernandez’s book “Selling Sexy.”
As beauty norms shifted and social media platforms amplified criticism
at the end of the decade, the brand appeared to be struggling to evolve
with its consumer. Sharleen Ernster, Victoria’s Secret former
executive vice president of design from 2011 until 2013, told CNN that
some in the company’s leadership ignored pushes to promote their
comfortable wireless bralette, or even expand into maternity wear or
diverse sizing.
Ernster, who had worked in the company for 13 years, believes the
Victoria’s Secret emphasis of sexiness over comfort ended up hurting
its bottom lines. “It was a big miss,” she said in a phone call.
She said the company’s former CEO, Wexner and L Brands’ former
chief marketing executive Ed Razek “were not willing to move the
brand from that perfect supermodel vision… (to) engaging an authentic
customer and gracefully aging with the customer.” The brand’s
leaders “were used to no-one saying no and thinking they were right,
and everyone sort of just living in a bubble,” she added.
Razek did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Wexner did not provide comment.
Then the bubble burst with tumbling sales and declining viewership.
Criticism reached its peak in 2018, when Razek told Vogue he didn’t
believe transgender models (whom he referred to as “transsexuals,”
a term seen as outdated and offensive to the LGBTQ community) belonged
on the brand’s runways “because the show is a fantasy.”
He also admitted to some pitfalls: “Yeah, we made some fashion
mistakes. We were late to the party on bralettes; we were late to the
party on downtown influences in our looks.”
The explosive interview, in which Razek also said there was no public
interest in a plus-size Victoria’s Secret catwalk, sparked public
outrage and model mutiny, with Kendall Jenner, Lily Aldrige and Karlie
Kloss writing Instagram story posts in support of the trans community.
Razek later in a statement posted on X (then Twitter), saying that his
remarks came off as “insensitive” and that the retailer “would
absolutely cast a transgender model for the show.”
Also hurting the brand was Wexner’s business ties to Jeffrey Epstein,
the financier and convicted sex offender. Wexner previously described
Epstein as his former personal money manager and ended his relationship
with Epstein in 2007.
The billionaire has , who died by suicide in prison in 2019, but the
relationship was to the company’s image. He eventually stepped down
in 2020 as CEO when Victoria’s Secret was valued at (down from $28
billion five years prior) and taken private.
Rise and fall and rise again?
The brand remains well-known in the US’s lingerie market, but it is
far from the days of its Y2K cultural dominance. It has spent the last
four years in a bid to regain cultural relevance and win back young
consumers.
A former executive of the company, who asked for their name to not be
published, defended the rebrand attempts to CNN, saying the new
leadership was facing significant challenges. “There had already been
a five- or six-year decline, erosion in the fundamentals of the
business,” on top of fixing the company’s reputation. “And by
addressing that, we also were able to create a world where women could
feel comfortable with the brand rather than put off by it,” they
added.
Will Victoria’s Secret soar to the heights it enjoyed a decade ago?
The monoculture, which the retailer so deftly navigated back then, does
not exist anymore, says Sherman of social media changing consumer
habits.
“We all live on our tiny corner of the internet, so they’re
(Victoria’s Secret) going to have to find their tiny corners, and the
people who live there, to love them.”
This means that success today is very different from 2004 or 1994, she
said there’s a desire to see Victoria’s Secret “achieve relevance
again — and that is also harder than ever to do.”
DIR <- back to index