As Victoria’s Secret mounts a comeback, a look back at its rocky past

From the 1980s through the early 2010s, she was both the definition and predominant arbiter of sexy, a word that has been through a complicated evolution. Is sexiness a performance for the male gaze? Or is it a formative element of self-esteem? Or is that just what the men who profit from it want women to believe?

“Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon” can answer those questions: Yes, yes and yes. The book charts the brand’s rise from an upscale Bay Area lingerie store to billion-dollar company whose fashion shows and expensive advertising campaigns embedded themselves deep within the psyche of many millennial women, who grew to idolize and despise it in equal measures. It also charts its fall, as the brand became eclipsed by more forward-thinking and inclusive lingerie makers, and tainted by its brush with scandal. Unwritten still is its coda: Victoria’s Secret is attempting to regain its former luster in a world that has a different definition of sexy than its heyday.

The book, by veteran fashion industry reporters Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez, revolves around three men. The first is former owner Leslie Wexner, the businessman whose fingerprints are on other once-popular mall brands beloved by millennials, including the Limited, Express and Abercrombie & Fitch (which recently launched a successful comeback).

Wexner was long revered as a merchant savant, someone who capitalized on trends by copying others, but doing it faster, cheaper and better — at least until other brands began to beat him at his own game. The authors’ portrait of Wexner, who did not participate in any interviews for the book, is mostly sympathetic, outlining his civic investments in Columbus, Ohio, where his companies were headquartered, as well as his tight control over his brands.

The second man, Ed Razek, was the brash marketer who shaped the company’s image and later resigned in disgrace after inappropriate behavior toward models and offensive comments about transgender models. Throughout the book, sources describe him denigrating many others. He declined to hire influencers, for example, because “They’re fat,” and wouldn’t cast mature models because “We’re not Jurassic Park.” He, too, declined to speak to the authors.

The third is Jeffrey Epstein, the predatory financier who ran a sex trafficking operation — and who, through his relationship with Wexner, one of his clients, posed as a recruiter of Victoria’s Secret models. Wexner has repeatedly denied he had any knowledge of Epstein’s activities. (A bonus fourth man who pops up sporadically in the book is Donald Trump, a former acquaintance of Epstein’s and frequent guest at the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows. One shoot for a catalogue in 1993 took place at Mar-a-Lago, and the book reports that Trump was asked to sign a contract that specified he was not allowed to come to the set to watch.)

Behind these men, there were women making shrewd business decisions, and they get their due. And in front of those men and all of us, there was another set of women — the Angels — strutting and jiggling down the runway and across our TV screens, cleavage pushed up nearly to their chins above spray-tanned washboard abs. They were both a product of and a driving force within the crass and regressive culture of the early 2000s.

Many of the details about Wexner and Epstein’s connection, and Razek’s misconduct, have previously been reported. So the most interesting revelations in “Selling Sexy” arrive as it details how the company made the career of models like Gisele Bündchen and Heidi Klum. The gig was considered the best contract in modeling — starting at $1.3 million for 48 days of work — even though it was also one of the most controlling. (The authors report that there was internal panic when Karlie Kloss cut her hair into a bob.) Some models thrived under those restrictions and became quite wealthy, while others chafed under the pressure, balked at the lowbrow nature of the gig — or were forced out by Razek’s predation or personal biases.

“Selling Sexy” is a business book first, and a work of cultural analysis second. Various marketing and discounting strategies for both Victoria’s Secret and its sister brands are examined in great depth. By contrast, the insights about the cultural impact of these decisions — which have repercussions that still echo throughout a generation of women and their self-esteem — fall, well, flat.

“We sell hope, not help,” is Wexner’s refrain throughout — a way of explaining why, for most of its history, the company rejected plus-size models and utilitarian undergarments like nursing bras. But culture caught up to the men of Victoria’s Secret: Progressive brands like Aerie, which eschewed the notion of a “perfect” body by not retouching its models, or Savage X Fenty, which offered a more inclusive range of sizes, siphoned customers from a brand whose definition of sexy was so limited that it didn’t even hire a red-haired Angel until 2019.

The word “sexy” feels tainted now, in marketing at least. Brands focus on other attributes: confidence, comfort, indulgence, self-expression. Victoria’s Secret is going to attempt yet another comeback, later this month: Its famed runway show will return Oct. 15, with performances by Tyla, Cher and K-pop star Lisa. Gigi Hadid and Tyra Banks will be there, the company has breathlessly promised in its updates. The word “sexy” is not uttered in the trailer.

Maura Judkis is a reporter for the Style section.

Selling Sexy

Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon

By Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez

Henry Holt. 305 pp. $29.99