Victoria’s Secret, Sexiness, and Journalism
My sister and I would celebrate the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show by making mocktails and cookies and wearing VS merch. // Earlier this month, I attended a book signing for "Selling Sexy."
As a teen in the early aughts, Victoria’s Secret was one of my favorite brands. It’s where I got my first bras and yoga pants, then it became my go-to store for underwear, pjs, bathing suits, and even sweaters.
I relished shopping trips to Victoria’s Secret, smelling the Pink fragrances and sifting through a rainbow of 5 for $25 underwear. At home, I spent hours scrolling through its website where the brand sold dresses, swim, sweaters, jeans, and shoes online. By the time I was a sophomore in high-school, my annual Christmas wishlist was 90% Victoria’s Secret clothing and accessories. One year, my parents gifted me a massive, pink vinyl tote bag with a leopard lining and a giant Victoria’s Secret logo on the front framed in gold. I wore that thing to school every day, along with my high heels and skinny jeans. I packed it so full that I nearly tilted to one side as I walked. So yeah, I was a loyal Victoria’s Secret fan.
That’s why when I attended a book signing for “Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon” last week, it was both nostalgic and sobering to remember the golden days of the brand. The book tells how Victoria’s Secret became a $7 billion brand, defined womanhood for a generation, and subsequently lost swaths of customers and closed dozens of stores. The authors, Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez, are journalists I’ve followed since their days at Fashionista and the Business of Fashion. It was really cool to hear about their reporting process, how they got people to talk to them, and how they determined the focus of the book.
“The narrative about the company’s struggles were so limited to, ‘Oh, the angels are out of date so this company isn’t doing well,’ Fernandez said. “It was so much more complicated than that and interesting than that.”
“This just felt like a big, epic story that our friends from high school would be interested in,” Sherman said, “that the people who read us at Business of Fashion would be interested in.”
Chantal Fernandez and Lauren Sherman are the authors of "Selling Sexy: Victoria's Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon."
Additionally, they mentioned that they could have written a completely different book about Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein. They admitted that it would have certainly given them a larger book advance, but they knew that making Epstein too much of a focus would have blown the connection out of proportion.
“That was something we were very specific about from the beginning,” Fernandez said.
“We talked to a lot of executives,” Sherman said. “It’s not like he was in the meetings. He wasn’t hanging out there every single day.”
“He definitely influenced decisions Les Wexner made, especially financial ones,” Sherman continued, but not the “day-to-day decision making at Victoria’s Secret.”
I appreciated that Sherman and Fernandez knew their lane — they have covered fashion and retail brands for many years — and they kept their focus on the business and brand of Victoria’s Secret, rather than its often sensationalized connection to a man with whom few employees interacted. I applaud their effort to publish the story that they felt was most important to tell and not just the one that would have gotten the most sales, as is often the case in the media business.
I could nerd out about journalism for hours, but in other news…
Tonight, Victoria’s Secret brings back its annual fashion show, which will be styled by French fashion editor Emmanuel Alt and feature performances by Tyla, Cher, and Lisa. I’m curious to see how the company will differentiate this fashion show from the ones I remember.
Every year from 2009 to 2012, not only did my sister and I look forward to watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but we planned for it weeks in advance. We’d buy the official fashion show merch, usually a tank top or t-shirt. One year, it was an elegant satin robe with the brand’s signature candy stripes in light pink. The show typically aired between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so one year VS sold pink Santa hats with rhinestones (I still have mine).
The night of the show was almost as exciting as Christmas morning. We’d make cookies and mocktails and take pictures around the tree in our outfits. We’d tune in to the broadcast and “ooo” and “ah” over all the pretty lingerie and extravagant angel wings. I loved seeing my favorite supermodels like Chanel Iman, Candice Swanepoel, Karlie Kloss, and Cara Delevigne walk down the runway looking flawless and confident.
We always had a photoshoot in our Victoria's Secret Fashion Show merch.
What I didn’t realize then was just how much influence this company and its brand of “Angels” had over my ideals of womanhood, body image, and sexiness. Of course we all know now that Victoria’s Secret promoted unrealistic ideals, but it wasn’t something I thought about as a teen. I just loved all the girly things and how pretty the models were.
Now that I’m reading “Selling Sexy,” it makes me reflect on my fandom a little differently. Victoria’s Secret profited off of young women’s desires to be sexy, flirty, and desired — an image formulated by men like Wexner who advanced the male definition of those traits. For me personally, this translated to years of trying to be what I thought men saw as sexy, flirty, and desirable.
It’s not so far off to realize this brand was one of the things that led me to a fixation on men’s desires in my early adulthood. As Sherman and Fernandez so eloquently wrote in their book:
“The target audience was young adult women, but the brand had an outsize effect on American girls born in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. This was a generation that would never remember a time before Victoria’s Secret dominated shopping malls and Super Bowl commercial breaks. Like their mothers before them, these girls grew up on the same inescapable idea hidden in plain sight across American culture. They were told that female sexuality involved little more than simply being seen as sexy. It was a performance. And what did sexy look like? Victoria’s Secret was happy to show them.”
That word — performance — especially struck me.
Just a few weeks ago, I was at another book signing and one of the authors was American supermodel and activist, Cameron Russell. Her memoir, “How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone” tells of her experience as a model and how her career led her to advocate for labor rights and climate and racial justice in the fashion industry. Russell even modeled for Victoria’s Secret. She donned this Swarovski 10th Anniversary costume for the 2012 fashion show.
Russell started modeling at 16, which apparently in the fashion world was old enough for agents, photographers, makeup artists, and art directors to sexualize her. The book begins with a list of these appalling encounters — I read them in shock as I waited to get my book signed.
Once it was my turn, I introduced myself to Russell — she was very kind and conversational. I told her I’d just begun to read her book, but these moments listed at the beginning got me wondering, how did her exposure to sexuality at a young age affect her understanding of womanhood?
She told me that she became highly aware of performance. Afterall, much of her job as a model was to slip into a role that went along with the clothes. “Sometimes performing can be good,” she told me, “but it’s not always for women.” So it’s important to understand “where that line is.”
When I think about everything we’re taught about being a girl and then becoming a woman — so much of it is about performance. Much of it is physical — what we look like, how we dress, how we act. But a lot of it can also be based on achievement too — where we go to school, what kind of job we get, who we marry, when we will have children, etc. etc.
All of this makes me want to reflect more about what I truly believe “sexy” means. Do I think something is sexy because of a manufactured image I’ve consumed for the last 15 years? Or could I redefine sexy for myself?
What do you think is sexy? Has it been defined for you by brands, celebrities, and culture? Or have you found your own version of sexy? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
