Selling Sexy

The story of how Victoria¿s Secret skyrocketed from a tiny chain of boutiques to a retail phenomenon with more than $8 billion in annual sales at its peak¿all while defining an impossible beauty standard for generations of American women¿before the brand¿s tight grip on the industry finally slipped

Victoria¿s Secret is one of the most influential and polarizing brands to ever infiltrate the psyche of the American consumer. Almost right at its start in the late 1970s, the company developed a cult following for its glamorous catalogs. Back then, shoppers had few alternatives to the stodgy department stores that sold most of the nation¿s intimate apparel. By 1982, the founders of Victoria¿s Secret avoided bankruptcy by selling to Les Wexner, the fast-fashion pioneer behind the Limited, whose empire of mall brands would go on to dominate American retail for forty years.

Wexner turned Victoria¿s Secret into a multibillion-dollar business, and the brand¿s cultural inf