The fantasy.
It was 2006 when Gisele Bundchen walked the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show wearing a pair of wings and looking fabulous while Justin Timberlake played “SexyBack”. Pure magic and one of my favourite marketing moments of all time (click here for a refresh).
I spent the decade after holding my breath every time the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show brought the twelve-month calendar to a close to see the models, the outfits, and marvel at the wonderfulness of it all. Its allure was impossible to resist and reach, however that was alright because not everyone can and should be a supermodel and the goal of marketing is to sell us something aspirational. The mirage continued and in 2013 I experienced a second jaw-dropping moment when Candice Swanepoel opened the show wearing the $10 million-dollar fantasy bra (watch it at this link).
Today the fantasy is no more. Victoria’s Secret announced in 2021 that “it has changed”, a radical and scary thing for a brand to do and a message that sounded reactive rather than being communicated out of the belief that it was indeed something it needed to deliver.
Sales had been dropping for five years, perceptions of beauty had evolved, their Head of Marketing Ed Razek gave a perceived out-of-touch interview for American Vogue and accusations of inappropriate behaviour emerged, the latter two probably the most pressing reasons behind the brand’s shift. I have watched the recent Hulu documentary “Angels & Demons”, and one cannot convince me the brand was inherently crooked and had to change tack despite potentially insidious associations with Jeffrey Epstein, Ed Razek’s misbehaviour and the promotion of the 90 – 60 – 80 beauty standard.
What I believe is that Victoria’s Secret is a brand arrested by its own success, not perspicacious enough to innovate and build on its strengths. In the line of fire, the company forgot what was good and unique about the brand and aligned it to the movements of the day instead. Despite it fitting with the narrative of some brands in their current market, this sense of political correctness and kosher that they have embraced is not landing and the more I mull it over, the more I am inclined to say that Victoria’s Secret is a brand that has volunteered itself to be assassinated by the cultural movements of the day (or it has been deliberated killed off by them).
Are we in the clear? In the clear yet, no.
In the age of Victoria’s Secret redefinition, beauty is no longer the traditional 90 – 60 – 90 dimensions that have globally, and agnostically been communicated for the last half a century and take a lot of native ability, effort and work to be achieved. Beauty is something that we individually define for ourselves, and so the brand now stands for all body sizes, empowerment, equality, and championing women’s voices. While these concepts and ideas are in themselves worthy, they are very difficult for a mass-market lingerie brand to embody and for a bra and pair of thongs to carry.
One of the first steps in Victoria’s Secret rebrand was the launch of The VS Collective, a group of seven global brand ambassadors who embody the new direction and sit closely to the beauty and conversational ideals that the company embraces. Chosen from among sportswomen, actresses, creatives, and models, and launched against a black and white visual platform, The VS Collective look more like a group of UN representatives than ambassadors for a global lingerie powerhouse. If the message that is supposed to travel is that Victoria’s Secret customers should align themselves to the ideals of a younger Madeleine Albright, then it is all too easy to pass up on the offer of empowerment, equality, and championing women’s voices and move on to something else. I suggest Agent Provocateur.
A natural step in this process was refreshing the look and feel of Victoria’s Secret stores. I recently walked into their Bond Street enclave, and it does not look at all like a lingerie shop. It’s an abstract hole in the wall that airs the same broad truths that the brand advocates; the seductive photography of the iconic VS Angels and show memorabilia are gone and what is left does very little to put its products in an appealing light.
The latest down the politically correct pipe has been this year’s summer campaign for their Icon bra, hailed to bring back some of the brand’s iconic supermodels like Naomi (that Naomi), Candice, and Gisele, as well as newer faces such as Adut Akech, Emily Ratajkowski, and Hailey Bieber. I liked Emily Ratajkowski better when she frolicked around the table and enhanced the use of pasta in the 2017 LOVE Advent campaign to the desperation of Piers Morgan. It was such an ‘on brand’ move for her. Shot against a black and white background and a posing broad and vague question about the definition of the term “Iconic”, Emily and all these other wonderful women look like scantily clad Victorian widows on a road heading exactly nowhere.
There’s more to come in the same vein, as apparently the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is making a comeback this year (i.e., 2023) celebrating women’s voices, creativity, and diversity. I’m expecting an aspirational black and white documentary on the issues plaguing the world today, celebrating women’s voices, creativity, equality and diversity (yawn).
I’ve always been of the belief that the one thing brands have going for them are their brand narratives when they are told compellingly in the territories that they inhabit, i.e., a lingerie brand should keep its narrative to the world of lingerie rather than political correctness, otherwise it all stops making sense semantically and it begins to lose all salience. The gap between where Victoria’s Secret stood mid-2010s and where it aims to organically stand now is too big to be credibly filled 1) in such a short time and 2) by a company that sells undergarments. VS has got baggage, and it’s all a little too sexy to forget.
I will still argue that there was nothing wrong with the Victoria’s Secret brand as it was developed in the 2000s and 2010s. Its positioning was clear, and the brand had strengths that it could have continued to develop: a reinvigorated DTC offer, close connections to the growing worlds of fitness and nutrition that could have been leveraged to support it, sponsoring sporting and campus events that champion the excellence of women and scout the latest modelling talent. Because if you look at their catwalks, you know they got game.
Talk about what it took to succeed as a model in the industry in a smart way and bring on the world’s best, most exotic, and sexiest supermodels to walks its shows, even Ashley Graham, when she’s not showing her cracked veneers and wiping her baby’s bottom on the floor at Target on Instagram, sorry, not sorry. (edited: Actually, perhaps leave Ashley out). Along this, build better corporate processes and weed out the culprits as needed.
The fantasy, reimagined.
Along all of this, keep its incredibly sexy, impossible to achieve standard of fantastic beauty and brand because there are women out there who still pine for that.
Therefore, while we’re waiting for Victoria to figure out her Secret, this is Agent Provocateur’s female-directed 2020 Spring – Summer campaign to remind her how it’s done.
Irina Gheorghe 
Leave a comment