Posted on 01/16/2023 6:49:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After Victoria’s Secret’s stock price plummeted last week and CEO Amy Hauk announced her departure after just eight months at the lingerie brand, conservative critics were quick to diagnose the company’s failures as a classic case of “go woke, go broke.”
It’s an easy, albeit lazy, argument to make considering the brand’s recent shift to “inclusive” models and the cancellation of their iconic “Angels” fashion show, but it ignores broader challenges across the retail industry, especially issues faced by brands with a long-held association with the now nearly extinct shopping malls.
Victoria’s Secret introduced its more “inclusive” rebrand campaign in 2021, announcing a shift from its iconic bombshell models such as Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bundchen to “changemakers” like U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, model Adut Akech, plus-sized model Paloma Elsesser, and even transgender model Valentina Sampaio. But blaming these “woke” changes that only happened less than a year and a half ago doesn’t add up when you consider the brand faced nearly identical leadership changes in 2018 and slumping sales since 2019, which is also the same year it canceled the once incredibly popular pop culture event, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
A more likely culprit for the brand’s struggles is its inability to recover from its image as a shopping mall destination for bands of teenagers wooed by the striped pink walls and the PINK Puppy logo. It’s safe to assume the brand was certainly happy to fold those giddy teenagers into its marketing base, but when online retailers such as ThirdLove and Adore Me offered cheaper and often higher-quality products available at the click of an Instagram ad, long-time millennial Victoria’s Secret customers abandoned the brand in the same way they abandoned shopping malls and brands like Abercrombie and American Eagle altogether.
The shift was compounded by the rise of athleisure brands such as Lululemon and Athleta, which offered trendier and higher quality versions of the tracksuits, loungewear, and swimwear Victoria’s Secret was once known for as much as its lingerie.
Finally, no amount of “body positivity” marketing or plus-sized models will change the American consumer’s association of the brand with beautiful, even if unattainable, female bodies plastered on 12-foot posters in mall windows. This is best illustrated by the fact that despite the company’s ongoing attempts at rebranding for several years now, one of the top viral TikTok songs of 2022 and a Billboard Top 100 song titled “Victoria’s Secret,” by the singer/songwriter Jax, is constantly played on pop stations as an anthem against “body shaming” and takes direct aim at the company.
“I know Victoria’s secret / And girl, you wouldn’t believe / She’s an old man who lives in Ohio / Making money off of girls like me / Cashing in on body issues / Selling skin and bones with big boobs,” the chorus rings out. Corporate media were quick to adopt the TikTok star’s messaging, writing clicky headlines about how the viral hit, “EXPOSES LINGERIE COMPANY FOR INHERENT SEXISM AND TOXICITY.”
Perhaps more impressive than VS’s ability to stay in business for as long as it has is its ability to maintain a brand image simultaneously known for “inherent sexism” while also employing transgender models and “going woke.” Maybe riding the fine line between both is the secret to staying afloat, for now.
I’m thinking it could also be because no one wants to pay $90 for a pair of underwear.
Last week Tatjana Patitz died of breast cancer at age 56.
She was one of the original "Big Five" of the supermodel era of the late 1980s.
Looking at her many modeling photos, it occurred to me that models used to be drop-dead gorgeous.
Not anymore.
Today, models are "edgy" --tattooed corpulent hambeasts of ambiguous gender and painful to the eyes. Yet we're being gaslit and told that these women (to include Buffalo Bill-looking transwomen) are beautiful.
Real beauty is no longer permitted.
Obviously we should start with the original angels.
i think far in the future, an honest history book will look on this whole woke business as a mass delusion.
someone at the company actually thought this was a good idea, and management green-lit it.
even an idiot knows image was what they had, and once you visually ruin that you never undo the harm.
at this point wal-mart lingerie section has better imagery than VS.
When a business fails, there is usually multiple reasons. VS brought total fail on themselves with the wokey foolishness and the place collapsed.
Who thought women didn’t want to look like fat women?
This is the exact reason why VS is no longer externally bank rolled. Their function as bait for his blackmail extortion racket has shifted elsewhere. I wonder if we would have gotten the FTX scam if the WEF/deep state attentions were still actively benefiting from Epstein’s operation.
danny is keen to see the woke VS images! post them!
cannot be unseen!
He wants to see the new wokey gals.
Womn who enjoy their food and want to live a sedentary lifestyle?
RE: Who thought women didn’t want to look like fat women?
Women who enjoy their food and want to live a sedentary lifestyle?
Nope, you need to see why this place is a fail.
Good point. I won’t add any reasoning for that.
Bahahahahaha…everyone loves to see trannies and chunky gals in bathing suits…c’mon man
and some are even guys!
Sorry. It’s not sexy when Fat Girls wear underwear.
It is even worse when they don’t.
Ugly is the new beautiful.
Let me see. Your product is sexy female undergarments. That's all you do. And you go from this:
To This:
I am no fan of either Campbell and Bundchen, but were I a shareholder in a sexy undergarments company like Victoria's Secret to make money, and not some social justice warrior, I would cash out and leave as quickly as I could.
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