It’s been just over a year since Victoria’s Secret made the leap from quietly struggling brand to flaming dumpster fire courtesy of some infamously tone-deaf remarks former exec Ed Razek dropped in a certain Vogue interview last year, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, things have only gotten worse.
On Wednesday, Victoria’s Secret posted yet another quarter of declining sales, CNN reported. The decline represents a 7 percent drop in sales compared to the same quarter last year. The brand’s parent company, L Brands, reported a total loss of $252 million during the quarter.
The brand’s failure to keep up with changing attitudes and tastes amid the body-positive and #MeToo movements has been an open secret for some time, and a series of PR disasters over the past year hasn’t helped the brand’s increasingly distasteful image.
As it turns out, Razek’s openly transphobic comments to Vogue preceded what may have been the brand’s last fashion show. In May, L Brands CEO Les Wexner announced the once-iconic TV event would not be televised this year, and by August, news broke that the fashion show may not occur at all.
Around the same time, Victoria’s Secret took another PR hit when Wexner’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein began making headlines. Razek, the brand’s longtime chief marketing officer, announced his departure shortly thereafter.
In the face of perpetually declining sales and an increasingly pressing image crisis, the brand finally began to make some moves toward winning back customers who have long demanded more inclusive sizing and marketing, hiring Victoria’s Secret’s first transgender model back in August.
Unfortunately for Victoria’s Secret, the delayed image rehab hasn’t seemed to help much, and the brand appears to be ending the year in an even worse place than it began.
Your 2019 may have sucked, but at least you aren’t Victoria’s Secret.
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