A progressive rebrand at Victoria’s Secret forgets one thing: sex
Victoria’s Secret has long been the embarrassing uncle of the underwear world, a dinosaur ambling across the lingerie landscape in a threadbare 1990s-style slip nightie, a relic of both a culture and a consumer model that no longer exist. Its catalogue, a boon to teen boys in the pre-digital age whose dads were too square to have a stash of Playboys, was discontinued in 2016. Its biggest attraction, a runway show that aired on cable TV and featured a stable of anatomically improbable models wearing prosthetic angel wings, was cancelled in 2019, after a multi-year ratings plummet. Its perfumed retail stores are shopperless tombs, anchored to decaying malls that nobody goes to anymore.
