Victoria's Secret

Victoria's Secret is an American designer, manufacturer and marketer of premium lingerie, it is the largest American retailer of women's lingerie, whose 2012 sales were $6.12 billion. The company sells lingerie, womenswear, and beauty products through its catalogs (sending out 375 million a year), website, and its U.S. stores. Victoria's Secret is wholly owned by L Brands, a publicly traded company.
Victoria's Secret was founded by Tufts University and Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus Roy Raymond, and his wife Gaye, in San Francisco, California, on June 12, 1977.

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Eight years prior to founding Victoria's Secret, Raymond was embarrassed when purchasing lingerie for his wife at a department store. Newsweek reported him looking back on the incident from the vantage of 1981: "When I tried to buy lingerie for my wife," he recalls, "I was faced with racks of terry-cloth robes and ugly floral-print nylon nightgowns, and I always had the feeling the department-store saleswomen thought I was an unwelcome intruder."

During the 1970s and 1980s, most women in America purchased "dowdy", "pragmatic", "foundation garments" by Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Jockey in packs of three from department stores and saved "fancier items" for "special occasions" like honeymoons. "Lacy thongs and padded push-up bras" were niche products during this period found "alongside feathered boas and provocative pirate costumes at Frederick's of Hollywood" outside of the main stream product offerings available at department stores.

Raymond studied the lingerie market for eight years before borrowing $40,000 from his parents and $40,000 from a bank to establish Victoria's Secret: a store in which men could feel comfortable buying lingerie. The company's first store was located in Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California.
Victoria's Secret grossed $500,000 in its first year of business, enough to finance the expansion from a headquarters and warehouse to four new store locations and a mail-order operation.

By 1980, Raymond had added two more San Francisco stores at 2246 Union Street and 115 Wisconsin Street.

By 1982, the fourth store (still in the San Francisco area) was added at 395 Sutter Street. Victoria's Secret stayed at that 395 Sutter Street location until 1991, when it moved to the larger Powell Street frontage of the Westin St. Francis.

In April 1982, Raymond sent out his 12th catalogue; each catalogue cost $3 (equivalent to $7.36 in 2015). Catalogue sales now accounted for 55% of the company's $7 million annual sales.

The Victoria's Secret stores at this time were "a niche player" in the underwear market. The business was described as "more burlesque than Main Street."
Victoria's Secret started working with renowned models in the early 1990s, with the hiring of Stephanie Seymour, Karen Mulder, Yasmeen Ghauri, Jill Goodacre, and Frederique van der Wal. These models helped the brand gain notice and soon enough were featured in televised commercials.

Angels is one of Victoria's Secret's lingerie lines, which was launched in 1997, with a commercial featuring Helena Christensen, Karen Mulder, Daniela Peštová, Stephanie Seymour, and Tyra Banks as well as pop star Tom Jones. The commercial was a major success and the Angels began to be featured in various commercials, alongside other contract models for the brand such as Yasmeen Ghauri, Inés Rivero, and Laetitia Casta. From then onwards, the term Angel started to become synonymous with being a contracted spokesmodel for the brand and in February 1998, the Angels made their runway debut at Victoria's Secret's 4th annual fashion show, with Chandra North filling in for Christensen.

Seymour, Mulder, Pestova, Banks, Casta, and Heidi Klum were all featured in both of Victoria's Secret webcast and took part in the promotion as the brand's contract models. Starting in 2001, the show has been televised and usually features the year's Angel line-up at the start of the show, starting with Pestova, Banks, Klum, and Gisele Bundchen In 2004, due to the Super Bowl controversy, instead of a televised show, Victoria's Secret sent its five contract models (Banks, Klum, Bundchen, Adriana Lima, and Alessandra Ambrosio) on a tour called Angels Across America, as by then, the word had become synonymous with Victoria's Secret spokesmodels. The last original Angel, Tyra Banks, departed the following year, as Karolina Kurkova, Selita Ebanks, and Izabel Goulart were hired.

Among other recognitions, the Victoria's Secret Angels were chosen to be part of People magazine's annual "100 Most Beautiful People in the World" issue in 2007 and became the first trademark awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 13, 2007, with Klum, Lima, Ambrosio, Kurkova, Goulart, Ebanks, Marisa Miller, and Miranda Kerr at hand. Alongside new Angel Doutzen Kroes, they also took part in the grand reopening of the Fontainebleau in Miami in 2008. In 2009, it was widely reported that Candice Swanepoel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Chanel Iman, Emanuela de Paula and Lindsay Ellingson had been hired by the brand. However, De Paula was absent from the fashion show and Erin Heatherton was credited in her place, alongside the Angels (Klum, Ambrosio, Kerr, Miller, Kroes, and Behati Prinsloo, with Lima being on maternity leave). The brand also held a nationwide competition to hire a new "runway Angel" (as are dubbed all the models who walk in the show), Kylie Bisutti was crowned as the winner but soon parted ways with the brand. In the following year-and-a-half Swanepoel, Huntington-Whiteley, Iman, Heatherton, and Ellingson all were revealed as Angels.

Various tours have been held featuring the Angels, such as the Bombshell Tour in 2010 (featuring Lima, Swanepoel, and new recruit Lily Aldridge), a VSX tour in 2013 (featuring Swanepoel, Ambrosio, Ellingson, and Aldridge) and a Swim Tour in 2013 (featuring Swanepoel, Ellingson, and Heatherton). The Angels have been heavily featured on the brand's social media, including on a short-lived Facebook application in 2013-2014 highlighting the Angels (then including Lima, Ambrosio, Kerr, Kroes, Prinsloo, Swanepoel, Heatherton, Ellingson, Aldridge, and Karlie Kloss) as well as Lais Ribeiro, Toni Garrn, and Barbara Palvin.

Ellingson, Kroes, and Kloss all departed soon after the 2014 fashion show, leaving the brand with only 5 Angels. In 2015, the Angels as well as models Elsa Hosk, Joan Smalls, Lais Ribeiro, Martha Hunt, Jasmine Tookes, Stella Maxwell, and Monika 'Jac' Jagaciak were featured on the brand's first ever Swim Special. Soon after, in the brand's biggest group hiring ever, all but Smalls were revealed as Angels, along with longtime catalog regulars Lais Ribeiro and Sara Sampaio as well as Kate Grigorieva, Taylor Marie Hill, and Romee Strijd.

Other notable spokesmodels for the brand have included: Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigová, Oluchi Onweagba, Jessica Stam, Ana Beatriz Barros, and Bregje Heinen as well as a handful of celebrities such as Taylor Momsen.
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