Updated 2025-10-15T19:00:08Z
- Victoria's Secret is the largest lingerie retailer in the US, and has been for several decades.
- After explosive success, it had several stumbles but has since overhauled its brand image.
- The brand is bringing back its Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Wednesday night.
Victoria's Secret is back — or it's at least making a play for a big comeback.
The lingerie retailer has been an industry leader in the US for several decades. But in recent years, the lingerie brand faced sluggish sales, criticism for its lack of model diversity and size inclusivity, scandal over its former CEO's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and an entire brand-image overhaul.
Things have been looking up for Victoria's Secret since it hired a CEO, Hillary Super, who previously led Savage x Fenty, in 2024. During the first half of 2025, comparable store sales were up 1%, compared with a 4% decline during the same period a year earlier.
Under Super's leadership, the fashion show that Victoria's Secret once broadcast annually is becoming a mainstay again. After bringing the event back in its original form last year, the 2025 event is set to stream live again on Prime Video at 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
Super said she isn't shying away from sex appeal this year. She told The Wall Street Journal that the brand became "watered down" by trying not to offend anyone.
The fashion show returns as the lingerie retail space has started to shift in a new direction — veering from push-up bras and skinny models to sports bras and a more body-positive image. Lingerie competitors, including Aerie, ThirdLove, and Lively, started to attract more interest from consumers. But Victoria's Secret has been working to build an emotional connection to shoppers and put out higher-quality products to stay ahead.
Here's a look at Victoria's Secret's rise and fall and the brand's plan for redemption.
Victoria's Secret was founded in 1977 by American businessman Roy Raymond.
Inspired by an uncomfortable trip to a department store to buy underwear for his wife, Raymond set out to create a place where men would feel comfortable shopping for lingerie. He wanted to create a women's underwear shop that was targeted at men.
He named the brand after the Victorian era in England, wanting to evoke the refinement of this period in his lingerie.
Raymond's vision was summed up by Slate's Naomi Barr in 2013: "Raymond imagined a Victorian boudoir, replete with dark wood, oriental rugs, and silk drapery. He chose the name 'Victoria' to evoke the propriety and respectability associated with the Victorian era; outwardly refined, Victoria's 'secrets' were hidden beneath."
He went on to open a handful of Victoria's Secret stores and launched its famous catalog.
By 1982, the company was making more than $4 million in annual sales, but according to reports, it was nearing bankruptcy at the time.
At this point, Les Wexner swooped in. Wexner, who founded L Brands (formerly Limited Brands), was already making a name for himself in the retail world as he gradually built up an impressive empire.
By June 1982, Limited — which had previously acquired Express and Lane Bryant — was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. One month later, under Wexner's leadership, the company acquired Victoria's Secret's six stores and its catalog for $1 million.
Wexner turned Raymond's vision on its head, creating a store that was focused on women rather than men.
He was closely following the European lingerie market of that time and wanted to bring this aesthetic to the US. So, he set out to create a more affordable version of the European upscale brand "La Perla" — lingerie that looked luxurious and expensive but was affordable.
And it worked. By the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret had become the largest lingerie retailer in the US.
It had 350 stores nationally and sales topping $1 billion, The Telegraph reported.
The brand began to cement its image over the next few years. In 1995, its famous annual fashion show was born.
The show, which was run by Ed Razek (longtime chief marketing officer of L Brands), became an iconic part of the brand's image.
Razek and his team were responsible for hand-picking the models to walk the show. Because of this, he became one of the most important people in the modeling world, helping to launch the careers of Gisele Bündchen, Tyra Banks, and Heidi Klum.
In 1999, the show aired for the first time online.
Time described it as the "internet-breaking moment" of this era after 1.5 million viewers tried to tune in and crashed the site.
Meanwhile, the brand was also launching some of its best-known and most successful products, including its heavily padded Miracle Bra and Body by Victoria.
Body by Victoria was a "blockbuster success" and more than doubled the sales volume of any other bra that Victoria's Secret had previously launched, Michael Silverstein wrote in his book, "Trading Up."
Around 1997, the idea of the Victoria's Secret "Angel" came into play.
It was after a commercial featuring Helena Christensen, Karen Mulder, Daniela Peštová, Stephanie Seymour, and Tyra Banks ran to promote its "Angels" underwear collection. It was tradition for an Angel to wear a Fantasy Bra at every runway show starting in 1996. They changed each year.
Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, its commercials featured heavily made-up and scantily dressed Angels.
Razek hired the best photographers and television directors in the world to make commercials for the brand.
The runway shows became more lavish.
In 2000, model Gisele Bündchen walked the runway in what was then the most expensive item of lingerie ever created, a $15 million diamond-and-ruby-encrusted 'Fantasy Bra.'
She became CEO of the whole brand in 2006.
Under her nine-year tenure, the company thrived; sales increased by 70% to $7.7 billion.
Turney abruptly stepped down in 2016 and was succeeded by Wexner as interim CEO.
Wexner made a series of quick and fast changes: killing the catalog, swimwear, and apparel to focus solely on lingerie, the core part of its business.
He also split the brand into three — Victoria's Secret Lingerie, Victoria's Secret Beauty, and Pink — and recruited a CEO for each division.
Jan Singer became CEO of Victoria's Secret Lingerie in September 2016.
Singer spent over a decade at Nike and was CEO of Spanx before she joined Victoria's Secret.
Between 2015 and 2018, sales began to falter.
Victoria's Secret was slow to adjust to a shift from padded and push-up bras toward bralettes and sports bras, missing out on a major fashion trend.
One of its biggest assets, the teen-centric brand Pink, also began to struggle. Sales slipped, and it resorted to heavy discounting to woo shoppers.
"We believe Pink is on the precipice of collapse," Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote in a note to investors in March 2018, commenting on the level of promotions in store.
Some parents complained that Pink was being brought down by Victoria's Secret's over-sexualized ads.
Its annual fashion show drew criticism for being outdated, and viewership slipped.
In November 2018, Ed Razek, then-chief marketing officer of L Brands, made controversial comments about transgender and plus-size models.
Razek said in an interview with Vogue that he didn't think the show should feature "transsexuals" because the show is a "fantasy."
"It's a 42-minute entertainment special. That's what it is," he said in the interview.
Razek made a formal apology online, but some of his critics called for him to step down.
Barington also called out the lack of diversity in its board of directors as an issue for the brand. At the time, of the 11 board members, nine were men.
The company appointed two new female board directors — Sarah E. Nash and Anne Sheehan — and made steps to address the comments about the brand image being outdated.
It hired a more body-inclusive model.
While she is not a plus-size model, fans praised the company for choosing Hungarian model Barbara Palvin as one of its newest Angels.
Instagrammers celebrated a post starring Palvin for being more body-inclusive, as they perceived her to be curvier than some of the brand's other models.
"This model actually looks healthy..& I'm loving it!" one Instagram user wrote.
It also hired its first openly transgender model.
Brazilian transgender model Valentina Sampaio, shared a photograph of herself on Instagram in August 2019, tagging the Victoria's Secret Pink brand along with the hashtags: "campaign," "vspink," and "diversity."A day later, she shared a video of herself with the caption "Never stop dreaming."
Her agent later confirmed that she had signed a contract with Victoria's Secret. Sampaio is expected to hit the runway for the 2024 show.
"Today Is the day!!! Finally after 6 years since my first VS casting, today the dream will come true," she wrote in an Instagram post ahead of the show.
The same day, Wexner announced that Razek would be resigning in the middle of August in a memo sent out to employees.
Razek ran the fashion show, so its future seemed unclear at the time of his departure.
On November 21, 2019, the company confirmed that it had officially canceled its runway fashion show for that year.
At the time, L Brands CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer told analysts that the fashion show had little impact on boosting sales at the brand.
While these were potentially positive changes, the brand found itself caught up in a new challenge in the summer of 2019: its CEO and the company being linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein managed Wexner's money for several years, and former company executives told The Wall Street Journal that he tried to meddle in Victoria's Secret's business, offering input on which women should be models.
Some of Epstein's victims came forward saying that he used his connection to Victoria's Secret to coerce them into sexual acts.
L Brands' board of directors announced that it had hired an outside law firm to review its relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in August 2019.
In September, Wexner addressed his ties to Epstein at L Brands' investor meeting. "At some point in your life we are all betrayed by friends," Wexner said. "Being taken advantage of by someone who was so sick, so cunning, so depraved, is something that I'm embarrassed I was even close to. But that is in the past."
In February 2020, the company announced that Wexner would be stepping down as chairman and CEO of L Brands.
Still, he'd stay on as chairman emeritus and sit on the board of directors. At the same time, it announced that it was selling a 55% stake in Victoria's Secret to private equity firm Sycamore Partners.
In a statement to the press announcing the news, Wexner said that Sycamore has "deep experience in the retail industry and a superior track record of success," and that it "will bring a fresh perspective and greater focus to the business."
In March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic swept across the US, and Victoria's Secret was forced to shutter its stores.
In April 2020, Sycamore filed a lawsuit to back out of the deal, alleging that Victoria's Secret's actions taken during the pandemic to close stores, cut back on new inventory, and not pay rent for the month of April were in violation of the agreement that the two parties had made in February.
L Brands immediately issued a statement saying that a termination of the agreement is "invalid," and that it would "vigorously defend" the lawsuit and "pursue all legal remedies to enforce its contractual rights."
On May 4, 2020, L Brands announced that the deal with Sycamore had officially fallen apart.
L Brands said that it had come to a "mutual agreement" with Sycamore to "terminate" the deal.
The company also said that it had reshuffled its management team and would focus on "implementing significant cost reduction actions and performance improvements at Victoria's Secret."
This included permanently closing as many as 250 Victoria's Secret and Pink stores in the US and Canada in 2020.
In the second half of 2020, the brand started to recover, boosted by more sales online.
Jefferies analysts described Victoria's Secret's progress as "admirable" after it reported strong fourth-quarter earnings in early 2021.
Bloomberg later reported that L Brands had resumed discussions to sell the brand once more and was seeking a much higher valuation in the region of $3 billion.
But in May of that year, L Brands put an end to speculation and said that it was no longer looking for a buyer. Instead, it would split the company into two and spin off Victoria's Secret to become a stand-alone business.
It then worked hard to execute a turnaround under new leadership.
It overhauled its brand image — swapping its Angels for a new group of activists and entrepreneurial women to be the face of the brand.
In 2022, a three-part documentary series on Hulu titled "Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons" shook up the brand in the public's eyes.
The series delved into Wexner's ties with Jeffrey Epstein and said that questions remained about the nature of their relationship.
In the background, the company was continuing with its turnaround effort by launching new ventures such as Happy Nation, a brand that sells first bras and apparel to pre-teen shoppers.
It also began selling Victoria's Secret beauty products and underwear on Amazon.
In March 2023, the company said its annual fashion show would return after a four-year hiatus.
The company is constantly innovating "in all spheres of the business," a spokesperson for Victoria's Secret previously told Business Insider, adding: "This will lead us into new spaces like reclaiming one of our best marketing and entertainment properties to date and turning it on its head to reflect who we are today."
Following the announcement about the revived Victoria's Secret fashion show, the lingerie brand said it would drop a movie as well.
By fall 2023, the retailer said it would release a "reimagined version" of its Victoria's Secret fashion show as a movie alongside a live fashion event.
"This film is the ultimate expression of the Victoria's Secret brand transformation," Raúl Martinez, creative director at Victoria's Secret, said in a statement. "It will be driven by fashion, glamour, and entertainment with a nod to beloved iconography from the past but in a bold, redefined way."
Over the past few years, Victoria's Secret campaigns have led to continued criticism of the brand.
In July 2023, supermodel Bella Hadid announced her participation in a Victoria's Secret campaign on her Instagram, a post that attracted a mixed bag of responses online. Some online commenters said the campaign was "perpetuating body dysmorphia to young women," while others defended it.
Victoria's Secret ired fans by dropping a marketing campaign similar to one from Kim Kardashian's Skims brand.
In August 2023, Victoria's Secret debuted a campaign that featured Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, and Adriana Lima, alongside other supermodels from the late '90s and early 2000s as well as newer faces to the modeling scene.
The brand also traded in its "Angels " label, though, and named its campaign "The Icon" — similarly titled to a Skims campaign from the year before titled "Icons." The similarities didn't end there: both campaigns included Victoria's Secret models from earlier eras, and both included photos with comparable overexposed lighting and editing styles.
Its "reimagined" fashion show premiered in September 2023.
The show received mixed reactions. Although Victoria's Secret was praised for its attempt to appeal to a wider audience, it lacked one important aspect for a fashion show: a runway.
Instead, the live fashion event was a premiere, of sorts, for the film, which was released on Prime Video days later.
Nostalgic Gen Zers could play a role in a comeback.
As Gen Z continues its obsession with the early 2000s, the styles of that time are making full-fledged comebacks. From ballet flats to trucker hats, Gen Z shoppers are searching for the Y2K aesthetic.
Victoria's Secret reported that its second-quarter earnings report for 2024 showed its quarterly operating income growing for the first time since 2021.
Victoria's Secret took a similar approach to the old ways for the 2024 fashion show.
The fashion show featured musical guests, including Cher and K-pop star Lisa, as well as a runway presentation — similar to how it was done before the 2019 cancellation.
It closed out the brand's third quarter of 2024, for which it reported a 7% increase in net sales year over year. Victoria's Secret told investors that the show also earned it more than 4 million new TikTok followers.
"In addition to driving brand awareness leading into holiday, the show drove brand relevance, putting VS at the center of culture and fashion conversations," Super said.
Super's first holiday season showed promise, but 2025 brought the threat of tariffs.
Victoria's Secret appeared to have a happy holiday in 2024, with its operating income exceeding expectations and comparable sales bumping 5%.
"After my first holiday season with the business, I continue to be optimistic about our future, our opportunity to further differentiate the brands with compelling storytelling and make even deeper emotional connections with our customers," Super said on an earnings call.
However, in 2025, Victoria's Secret hasn't been immune to the financial challenges that tariffs on countries like China present. The company said in June that it would cut back on promotional sales as tariffs affected business.
In August, it said it's expecting a net tariff impact of about $100 million for 2025.
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show will stream live on Wednesday night.
October 15 is show day for the Angels of Victoria's Secret. Karol G, Madison Beer, Missy Elliott, and others will perform.
The show and its shopping event will be live-streamed on Prime Video, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The lingerie giant is channeling star power this year with WNBA star Angel Reese and other influencers modeling looks in the show.
"What is a modern Angel?" she said to the Journal in September. "Does it have to be a supermodel? We are having those debates."
