Victoria's Secret Announces it's Bringing 'Sexiness' Back, Since the Rebrand Featuring 'Changemakers' Was Not 'Enough to Carry the Day'

MARTIN BUREAU. Getty Images.

I'm a big believer that culture is a pendulum. Societal changes come about, they take us in a particular direction, gain momentum, begin to slow, hit their extreme apex, and then head back the other way. Where again, they go to as far as they can in that opposite direction, then start heading back toward the middle. 

This applies to all things. Politics, language, fashion, entertainment. (Music in particular has followed this back and forth. There was about a five year span between The Clash's "London Calling" and Duran Duran's "Rio" video, where the lads dance around on a sailing yacht in designer suits.) And if you average things out over the long run, the math shows that humans are who we are. That we're fundamentally drawn to the things we desire at a genetic and evolutionary level. And you can't fight nature. 

Advertisement

It feels right now that our great cultural pendulum is swinging back to the mean where we admit humans are attracted to certain other humans. And those other humans would be the ones we find … wait for it … physically attractive. Which sounds obvious enough. But corporate America has been trying to gaslight us into thinking it's not true. Including the company that built an empire by putting objectively gorgeous women in sexy outfits. 

That is, until they tried to go in the other direction two years ago, and sell lingerie based on some other set of criteria:

Now, according to Victoria's Secret's own management, that experiment has ended. As you'd imagine, in failure:

CNN - The radical transformation of Victoria’s Secret is over.  

The American lingerie chain has spent the last two years overhauling its hyper-sexualized image in a bid to regain cultural relevance and win back young consumers. … 

There were some successes, including a campaign to launch the “new” Victoria’s Secret featuring soccer player Megan Rapinoe, transgender model Valentina Sampaio and other spokesmodels …as well as new-look ambassadors, including plus-size models Paloma Elsesser and Ali Tate-Cutler.  …

 Victoria’s Secret: The Tour ‘23, an attempt to revive the runway show format that launched last month fell somewhere in between the personification of male lust of the brand’s aughts-era heyday and the inclusive utopia promoted by its many disruptors.  

But in a presentation to investors in New York last week, it was clear which version of the brand Victoria’s Secret executives see as its future.  

“Sexiness can be inclusive,” said Greg Unis, brand president of Victoria’s Secret and Pink, the company’s sub-brand targeting younger consumers. “Sexiness can celebrate the diverse experiences of our customers and that’s what we’re focused on.” …

“Despite everyone’s best endeavours, it’s not been enough to carry the day,” said chief executive Martin Waters.

In the whole history of marketing, has there ever been a more obvious "Ya think?" than this one? A company that was super successful for decades because they sold sexiness has now discovered that sexiness is profitable. More profitable than trying to sell product by promoting social activism or Megan Rapinoe's brave and powerful stance on how the US soccer teams should divvy up their revenue or whatever. Who'd have thunk it? 

On that note, let's can it with that "personification of the male lust" drivel. Because VS's own shrinking revenue would say otherwise. Those young customers they're now scrambling to win back are women. Who also want to see women they find attractive modeling the products. Take them away, and you lose your target demo:

[T]he brand is projecting revenue of $6.2 billion this fiscal year, down about 5% from the previous year and well below the $7.5 billion from 2020.

What other reason could there be for that level of drop off? It's not like in a post-lockdown world, women decided they had less need to dress erotically. They were simply turned off by the clumsy, ham-fisted push to promote some social cause instead of giving them what they desire. Which is sexiness. The brand president's word, not mine. 

I'll end with a great point Adam Carolla made not long ago. These companies like Victoria's Secret or the soap manufacturers can keep on pushing this alternate version of what beauty is supposed to be. But at the end of the day, just take a look at who Leonardo DiCaprio is fucking. It's not the "new-look ambassadors," "plus-size models" or "changemakers." It's the kind of woman Victoria's Secret was putting on a runaway until about two years ago. That's the reality check the "disruptors" refused to acknowledge as they tried to build that utopia. And for this company, it was a lesson that cost them literally billions of dollars to learn.