Victoria’s Secret: Documentary reveals the brand’s dark side

BBC News Brazil

An angel just arrived from heaven flaps its wings in a series of pirouettes before landing with a blue explosion, in a spectacle more Cirque du Soleil than an underwear show.

From the blinding light emerges Brazilian model Adriana Lima, wearing a metallic push-up bra and pink latex stockings up to her crotch, followed by her compatriot Gisele Bündchen, the highest-paid model of the moment, in a gaudy yellow trikini.

Seated in the front row are musicians Sean Combs — better known as Puff Daddy or P. Diddy — Pharrell Williams, actor Chris North, who plays Mr. Big in the series “Sex and the City”, then-real estate mogul Donald Trump and his girlfriend Melania Knauss.

It’s 2003 and no one in the motley crowd wanted to miss the ninth annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show, the most celebrated lingerie brand of all time.

After an applauded performance by Sting and Mary J. Blige, the last of the entourage of mannequins with mile-long legs and tiny thongs to appear on stage is German Heidi Klum.

Tasked with closing the 40-minute show, she parades down the catwalk dressed in a diamond-and-lace-studded ensemble valued at $11 million and four-and-a-half-meter-tall white wings.

This was what the company looked like in its heyday, when year after year it broke records for profit and dictated the trend of what was sexy and what wasn’t, like the inevitable cultural phenomenon it had become. However, it wasn’t all glitter, and its status on retail Olympus didn’t last long. From the darkness behind the brand and its resounding fall, even more spectacular than its rise, is “Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons” (“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”), a three-part documentary series directed by Matt Tyrnauer.

Former editor of Vanity Fair magazine and who had previously directed documentaries about Studio 54 and designer Valentino, he knew he had found a topic for a new work when in 2019 he learned that several models were rebelling against the company on social media. .

“They were biting the hand that fed them,” the director told the British newspaper The Guardian. “I like to tell stories about closed worlds and systems and I thought there was something there.”

The series really has a lot to tell, but here are four of the most shocking revelations it makes as it dismantles the Victoria’s Secret universe.

1. A DECADES RELATIONSHIP OF ITS CEO WITH JEFFREY EPSTEIN

Few people have never heard of Victoria’s Secret, but not everyone is familiar with the name of its former CEO, Leslie Wexner.

Born in Ohio in 1937, he is the billionaire founder of L Brands Inc., parent company of brands such as The Limited, Bath & Body Works and Abercrombie & Fitch (which was also in the eye of the hurricane and has its own documentary).

His crown jewel, Victoria’s Secret, he bought for $1 million from founder Roy Raymond in 1982 and within a decade turned it into a multimillion-dollar business.

“He was the guy who figured out how to make Americans shop, shop, shop, shop,” says Teri Agins, author of “The End of Fashion” (1999).

But despite his merits that as early as 1986 made him the sixth richest man in the US, Wexner kept a low profile beyond business circles for years, until the arrest of financier Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges in 2019 put him on the radar. of the general public.

Epstein and Wexner first met in the mid-1980s, when they were introduced by a mutual friend, insurance executive Robert Meister. And according to who frequented the same social circles at the time, the two quickly became allies.

“People say it’s like we have the same brain,” Epstein himself told Vanity Fair in 2003 about his relationship with Wexner. “Each one controlled a side.”

Asked how a former math professor turned investment adviser turned Wexner into his biggest client, several voices in the documentary series point to his “fascinating personality” and his “ability to convince anyone of anything.”

Although Cindy Fedus-Fields, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret Direct, one of the conglomerate’s subsidiaries, points out that it was a mutually beneficial relationship: “Wexner had the money that Epstein wanted, and Epstein had the glamor and refinement that the other was looking for. to be able to circulate among the high society of New York.”

In any case, the businessman granted the consultant power of attorney in 1991, giving him “unlimited control over all of his assets,” according to Washington Post reporter Sarah Ellison. Epstein could write checks, buy and sell property, and borrow on Wexner’s behalf.

He had such powers until 2007, when Wexner severed professional ties with him after the first allegations against him in Florida surfaced.

2. EPSTEIN POSING AS A MODEL RECRUITER

Epstein never officially worked for his client’s lingerie company. This was clarified in 2019 by a spokesperson for Victoria’s Secret to The New York Times. However, this did not seem to be an obstacle for the funder to present himself as responsible for recruiting models for this.

In one part of the documentary, Fedus-Fields recalls how a company executive informed him of this in 1993 and how she herself reported it to Wexner.

According to a written statement included in the documentary series, the businessman’s lawyer says he “confronted Epstein” about the allegations that same year, but denied posing as a headhunter for the company.

However, in 1997 model Alicia Arden, who had posed for Playboy magazine and acted in the series “Baywatch”, reported to police that Epstein had invited her to a hotel in Santa Monica, California, with the excuse that they were looking models for Victoria’s Secret.

As described by Arden, who was then 27, Epstein grabbed her, tried to undress her and told her he wanted to “kill” her. The financier has repeatedly denied this, and Wexner has continued to publicly support him.

In a 2003 interview with Vanity Fair, the businessman referred to Epstein as “highly intelligent, combining excellent judgment with exceptionally high standards”, as well as describing him as “the most loyal of friends”.

To this day, he continues to deny “having any knowledge of Epstein’s sexual misconduct while working for him,” his lawyer told the documentary’s producers.

Even so, former employees of the brand and journalists who investigated the matter assure that this behavior attributed to Epstein is part of the accusations that would come to light: that between 2002 and 2005 he paid minors under 14 in exchange for sex and then used them. to recruit other girls for the same thing.

Trafficking attorney Conchita Sarnoff says Epstein was able to “bring girls from all over the world to the US under the guise that he was hiring them to model” thanks to his position as Wexner’s financial adviser.

Epstein committed suicide on August 10, 2019, in his New York prison cell, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. He was 66 years old, pleaded not guilty and could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted.

His wife, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty of sex trafficking for Epstein to abuse minors and other crimes in 2021. Wexner was never listed as an accomplice in the charges or implicated in any way in the case.

And in a letter sent to his employees in 2019 after Epstein’s arrest, he assured that he “never became aware of any illicit activity by the defendant.” “I would never have imagined that an employee of mine could cause so much pain to so many people,” he added.

That same year, the businessman revealed that he was also a victim of Epstein, whom he accused of stealing $46 million, although he never filed a complaint against him for it.

Meanwhile, there are voices calling for a further investigation, pointing out that it was Wexner who sold Epstein the private plane he was allegedly using to traffic women and girls – referred to by journalists and investigators as the “Lolita Express”, as well as the New York where some of the abuse allegedly took place.

3. “HARRASSMENT AND MISOGYNY CULTURE”

The misconduct allegations against Epstein weren’t the only ones that hit Wexner in his time at the helm of the lingerie giant. Around this time, several employees and models began to speak of the “culture of harassment and misogyny” within Victoria’s Secret.

In the documentary, several former executives accuse Ed Razek, who was the company’s chief operating officer, creator of the “angels” show and its television shows, of trying to kiss the models and ask them to sit on his lap.

He denied the allegations and declined to comment for the series, “so as not to dignify such crazy accusations with a response,” as reported by Times magazine. However, in an interview offered in 2019 to Vogue, he exposed a little of the culture indicated in the documentary, leaving himself in evidence.

“If you’re asking me if we thought about including a transgender model in the show or a plus-size model, yes, we did,” Razek said. “Why don’t we include someone who is size 50? Or 60? Shouldn’t we have transsexuals on our show? No, we shouldn’t. And why not? Because the show is a fantasy.”

The backlash from LGBTQIA+ groups and members of the fashion industry was such that Victoria’s Secret issued a statement of apology and Razek was forced to resign.

4. THE BRAND’S INABILITY TO ADAPT TO THE POST-ME TOO WORLD

“We had to follow these men’s closed vision of what a woman should be, a sex bomb, someone with an unattainable image,” says Sharleen Ernest in the docuseries, referring to Razek but also to Wexner.

According to the former Victoria’s Secret executive, its directors never accepted suggestions to expand the brand into the market of underwear for pregnant women and babies, or to include slimming clothes in its catalog.

At that time, top-tier models who had been angels for several seasons began posting messages on social media in which Victoria’s Secret criticism could be read between the lines.

Like when Bella Hadid, after taking part in the Savage x Fenty show, Rihanna’s brand, whose cast included women of different ages and faces, said she had never felt so comfortable in underwear.

In 2020, Wexner stepped down as CEO and sold his majority stake in the company.

A year later, Victoria’s Secret bid farewell to the ‘angels’ fashion show that had generated so much anticipation since 1995 and announced a complete overhaul of its brand image.

In an attempt to become more inclusive, she created the VS Collective, made up of women like soccer player Megan Rapinoe, skier Eileen Guy and plus-size model Paloma Elsesser.

Interviewees for the documentary agree that it was a positive but late change. “That they present themselves as a brand reborn is also an interesting part of the story,” director Tyrnauer told CNN.

“But most fascinating of all is how late they came, having been so brilliant at navigating the zeitgeist and exploring major cultural trends to generate millions of dollars over so many years.”

Victoria’s Secret is still a profitable brand — last year it posted $6.7 billion in profits, 25% more than the year before — but it’s fighting for something that already seems impossible. : regain the relevance of another era.

Meanwhile, at $5.8 billion, Wexner remains Ohio’s richest man, but his legacy has been deeply, perhaps irrevocably, damaged by the scandals and his close relationship with Epstein.

This text was published here.