Victoria’s Secret will resurrect its once-famous show in New York City tonight in a high-stakes bid to regain the limelight it lost years ago amid controversies over its toxic culture.
The lingerie brand canceled its iconic runway show in 2019 due to poor ratings and revelations about abused models and their ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But even as the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show restarts, it remains plagued by a sordid past, and a new book reveals exactly why the scandal-rocked brand disappeared in the first place.
selling sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon, exposes shocking new details about her ties to such controversial figures as Epstein and former President Donald Trump.
As Tyra Banks, Cher, Gigi Hadid and others prepare for the show, DailyMail.com looks at the scandals and asks whether the lingerie brand that once dominated the world can bounce back.
Victoria’s Secret will try Tuesday night to restart the success it enjoyed with its spectacular runway shows in the 2000s.
DONALD LOOKING
Donald Trump had a reputation for getting too close to curvy young models as early as the early 1990s, according to the book by Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernández.
Back then, as a New York businessman, Trump was asked by Victoria’s Secret if they could do a photo shoot at his Palm Beach country club, Mar-a-Lago, in 1993.
But that request came with one condition: Trump was not allowed to attend the glamorous session.
The book quotes Frederique van der Wal, the Dutch model who knew Trump socially and wanted to pose semi-naked at his Florida retreat.
“I said, the only thing is that you have to sign a contract and you can’t (watch the filming),” van der Wal said.
The European beauty was photographed at a Mar-a-Lago doorstep in the one-day shoot “without Trump hanging around,” the book says.
Van der Wal’s comments seem to suggest that Trump at the time had a reputation among his peers for lewd behavior toward models.
Donald Trump had a reputation for getting too close to contestants and their dressing rooms when he owned beauty pageants in the 1990s and 2000s.
Donald Trump kisses Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins, at a cocktail party in New York in 2004
Dutch model Frederique van der Wal insisted Trump was banned from attending her scantily clad photo shoot at Mar-a-Lago.
Young women later complained about how Trump would enter contestants’ dressing rooms naked and changing when he owned the Miss United States beauty pageants.
Former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon said Trump had entered her dressing room when she was a contestant in 2001.
“He just walked in,” Dixon said in 2016.
‘There wasn’t a second to put on a robe or any type of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Other girls were naked.
Trump has also corroborated this, saying that he was “allowed in because I own the contest and therefore I am inspecting it.”
“You see these amazing-looking women, and that’s why I get away with things like that,” she said.
MODEL ABUSE
Organizers of Tuesday night’s reboot of the Victoria’s Secret show are seeking to turn the page on past accusations of a misogynistic culture and being rife with sexual harassment and bullying.
Alessandra Ambrosio prepares backstage for the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York City
Victoria’s Secret seeks to turn the page on the era headed by Leslie Wexner, who maintained a close business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
The New York Times interviewed dozens of former employees and models in 2020 and revealed how one of its top executives, Ed Razek, had attempted to kiss models and asked them to sit on his lap.
Razek touched a woman’s crotch before the 2018 Victoria’s Secret show, according to the allegations, which he called “categorically false, misinterpreted or taken out of context.”
Worse yet, when insiders attempted to address the lewd treatment, Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder and head of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, reportedly refused to get involved.
Casey Crowe Taylor, a former Victoria’s Secret public relations employee, told The Times that obscene behavior was “ingrained” in the brand.
“This abuse was simply ridiculed and accepted as normal,” Crowe Taylor said.
“It was almost like brainwashing. And anyone who tried to do something about it wasn’t simply ignored. They were punished.’
Fashion shows increasingly faced criticism for setting incredibly high beauty standards for young women.
Critics also criticized the use of underage models, especially when the PINK line of sexualized items aimed not at adult women but at tweens and teens was launched in the early 2000s.
PINK runway model Dorothea Barth-Jorgensen said she had to wear a “dress with toys around it” in a candy-themed children’s set. Another was wearing a hoodie and riding a mock tricycle.
SHAMED FAT ANGELS
Victoria’s Secret gradually fell out of favor due to the impossible beauty standards it set for women with its parade of scantily clad models, long, plump legs with bellies as flat as ironing boards.
This left the brand increasingly at odds with the post-#MeToo climate, as rates of anxiety and low self-esteem rose among its target audience of young women.
Things were worse within the organization, with models shamed for gaining even a few pounds, according to the series Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.
Crowe Taylor said on the Hulu show that Razek, the firm’s top marketing executive, body-shamed her while sharing a buffet with models and creatives on set in 2015.
“I was going up to get more and Ed physically stopped me, stood in front of me and said, ‘Are you really going to get more food?’ and I froze,” she said.
“And he said to me, ‘I really don’t know what you look like in the mirror in the morning.’
Plus-size models weren’t the only ones rejected from the runway.
Razek was also criticized for saying in 2018 that there was no place for ‘transsexuals’ in his lingerie shows.
THE EPSTEIN FILES
In damaging new revelations, the book further implicates Chief Wexner in the mid-1990s with Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and sex offender who recruited underage sex workers for his island resort.
New book uncovers deeper ties between Victoria’s Secret executives and billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
Epstein’s infamous “Pedophile Island” featured a mansion with a 10-person shower, guest villas, a helipad, a private dock and three private beaches, as well as a room with a dentist’s chair.
The Times in 2019 revealed that Epstein used to present himself as a Victoria’s Secret model recruiter and that he had “unusually strong control” over Wexner, rather than financial ties.
The new 307-page book goes further, revealing how, in 1991, just a few years after they met, Wexner gave Epstein power of attorney and the authority to act financially on his behalf.
“It just doesn’t make sense why (Wexner) did something like that, to allow Epstein to manage all of his money,” a former top company executive told the authors.
‘It was disconcerting. Everyone thought Les was a retail genius, and then he did this. “It was so strange.”
According to the authors, Wexner’s mother, Bella, and others could not understand Epstein’s motives or the basis of their friendship.
The book claims that Wexner revealed to a friend that Epstein had created much of his wealth.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Tuesday night’s reboot isn’t the first time executives have brought a defibrillator to Victoria’s Secret.
Last year, they released a revamped filmed version of a show for Prime Video.
The company has now separated from former parent company L Brands, Razek and Wexner, and is looking to rebrand and “reflect who we are today.”
Pro-Palestinian model Gigi Hadid prepares backstage at the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
Organizers say the rebooted show will have the “glamour, runway, wings, musical entertainment and more” that made it a hit in decades past.
That means abandoning “an exclusionary view of what is sexy” and “celebrating all women in every phase of their lives,” according to a statement about the new direction.
But there will still be “glamour, runway, wings, musical entertainment and more,” they added in an Instagram post in May.
The show will be headlined by Cher and will feature Hadid and Banks among a group of models including Mayowa Nicholas, Barbara Palvin, Behati Prinsloo, Jasmine Tookes and Adriana Lima.
ET at the brand’s flagship store in New York City and will stream on Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Live.
For some die-hard fans, it’s a chance for Victoria’s Secret to reclaim its place as America’s top lingerie brand.
For others, it is the moment when a failing company finally woke up, before going bankrupt.
Sell sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the collapse of an American icon by Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez is published by Henry Holt and Co.
