Lady Business: Millennials vs. the Old Men Running Victoria’s Secret
Hello and welcome to Lady Business, a weekly newsletter about women, the business world, and all the ways they overlap. You can sign up for Lady Business and read previous issues here. This is the fifty-first issue, published December 6, 2018.
Grey-Haired, Pink-Washed
Millennials, you may have read this week, are killing canned tuna. (Because we don't ... own ... can openers? Or because we've realized that tinned, preserved fish is kinda gross? Or could it be because Big Tuna is corrupt and got caught in conspiracy price-fixing and had to plead guilty to a government felony charge…? Nah, never blame yourselves, guys!)
My generation has been blamed for the death of a lot of things -- including Applebee’s, talking on the phone, and, apparently, napkins? -- but I’d like us to stand up and take credit for another long-overdue death spiral:
As a television event, the Victoria's Secret fashion show appears headed for the remainder bin.
The show has been buffeted by bad publicity, bad reviews and now bad numbers. Shown on ABC on Sunday after several years on CBS, its audience of 3.27 million viewers was the smallest since becoming a holiday season TV event in 2001. The Nielsen company said the show has lost more than half its television audience in two years.
I know, I know -- it’s very Humorless Feminist of me to revel in the demise of the televised equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. (“But actually, it’s empowering to women!”)
But the Victoria’s Secret fashion show is a symptom rather than a cause, with its ratings reflecting the absolutely abysmal time the whole company has had of late. As these two charts from Quartz show:
There are lots of causes for the company’s tumbling stock prices: Falling sales. Crappy products. Mounting competition from startups including ThirdLove, True and Co, and Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty. Terrible brand perception: 60 percent of respondents told a 2017 Wells Fargo consumer survey that Victoria’s Secret’s brand feels “forced” or “fake.” A recent CEO departure. Out-of-date marketing. Out-of-date executive comments about not casting transgender and plus-size models in his “fantasy” fashion show.
Which is the original sin at the heart of Victoria’s Secret’s current troubles: The company was born out of one man’s fantasy, and today serves the fantasies of two other (septuagenarian-plus!) men.
Founder Roy Raymond opened the first Victoria’s Secret in 1977 because he wanted a safe space to buy his wife the lingerie he wanted her to wear. (He didn’t want to feel, like, gross when asking her to be sexy for him.) In 1982, he sold the company to Les Wexner, the CEO of what was then The Limited and what is now known as L Brands. Later that decade, Wexner hired chief marketing officer Ed Rezak, father of the company’s fashion show (and the man who told Vogue this year that his fantasies don’t include transgender or fat women; he later apologized).
After those comments and the brand’s recent slump, however, it wasn’t Rezak who resigned -- it was Jan Singer, the (female) CEO of the Victoria’s Secret brand within L.
This has all been well-covered in recent weeks -- it’s hardly news that Victoria’s Secret is all about literally pink-washing the male gaze -- but what strikes me is not just how male these executives are but also how, well, old. As Amy Odell notes in a Time feature:
Wexner, 81, has remained at the helm for decades, and L Brands’ chief marketing officer, Ed Razek, 70, continues to be the key figure shaping the brand’s image, even after recent comments brought a cascade of negative attention to the company.
So it’s not just that Victoria’s Secret is trying to sell women lingerie for men; it’s selling lingerie for men who are literally past retirement age, while competing with Millennial-focused startups run by and for 20- and 30-something women. (Victoria’s Secret: What Your Grandpa Thinks Is Sexy!)
Victoria’s Secret isn’t out of the game yet – Aerie, ThirdLove, et al aren’t anywhere near its market share or retail scope. But as Odell points out, the company doesn’t seem ready to embrace, or fix, the fundamental mismatch between the men setting its vision and the women it wants to sell to:
Some change seems inevitable, if only due to Razek’s and Wexner’s advancing ages. “Les can’t be like 90 years old and pushing Victoria’s Secret’s bralette business,” [consultant and former L Brands employee Lee] Peterson said. Next year, there will be a new Victoria’s Secret CEO to replace Singer: Tory Burch president John Mehas. Which means the future of “sexy” is, once again, in the hands of a man.
Lady Bits:
--“No one wants to be known as ‘the race/gender police’ … when you have at least one ally… you get to share that responsibility so you're not ‘the one.’” The Hollywood Reporter’s roundtable with black women who write for TV is worth reading in full.
--"Mr. Travolta, who looks as if he's given up weight-lifting in favor of ice cream sodas..." From 1989; I’m less surprised when male movie critics take these sorts of casual shots at actresses, but I guess sometimes they can be equal-opportunity awful!
--That link via this feature about Amy Heckerling and the Clueless musical (yay!).
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