The History of Victoria’s Secret

It started with an awkward shopping trip. In the mid-1970s Roy Raymond went to a department store to buy lingerie for his wife and felt so out of place that he decided to build a different kind of shop: one where a man would not feel embarrassed and a woman would feel like she was walking into a Victorian boudoir. He borrowed $40,000 from his family and another $40,000 from a bank. The name was a joke with a wink: Victoria, as in Queen Victoria, and the secret, as in whatever is hidden under the clothes.

• 1977Roy Raymond and his wife Gaye open the first store at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California.
• 1982Leslie Wexner’s The Limited buys the company for $1 million.
• 1995The first Fashion Show, at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
• 1996The first Fantasy Bra: the “Million Dollar Miracle Bra”, worn by Claudia Schiffer.
• 1997A TV commercial gives us the word “Angels”.
• 1999A Super Bowl ad sends more than 2 million people to the first webcast.
• 2001The show moves to network TV, on ABC, and 12.4 million people watch.
• 2018The last show of the old era, watched by about 3.2 million.
• 2019The show is officially cancelled.
• 2021The Angels are replaced by the VS Collective.
• 2024The show comes back, in New York.
• 2026Sunday 18 October: Los Angeles.

From a shop to an empire

The first store opened on 12 June 1977 in Palo Alto, California. Five years later Leslie Wexner, the founder of The Limited, bought the whole company for $1 million. It turned out to be one of the best deals in retail history: under Wexner, Victoria’s Secret went from a handful of shops to the biggest lingerie brand in America.

The show is born

The first Fashion Show took place on 1 August 1995 at the Plaza Hotel in New York, introduced by Stephanie Seymour. It was a business move as much as a fashion moment: two months later the parent company sold shares on the New York Stock Exchange, and Seymour rang the closing bell.

Then came the ideas that made the show a legend. In 1996 Claudia Schiffer was the face of the first Fantasy Bra, the “Million Dollar Miracle Bra”. In 1997 a TV commercial with Helena Christensen, Karen Mulder, Daniela Peštová, Stephanie Seymour and Tyra Banks introduced the word that would stick for twenty years: Angels. And in 1999 a Super Bowl ad sent more than 2 million people to watch the show online, at a time when the internet was not ready for it. The stream struggled with bad connections and blurry video. Victoria’s Secret still likes to say it “broke the internet”.

It was never really about lingerie. It was about a fantasy, broadcast once a year.

The golden years

From 2001 the show was on network television, first on ABC and then on CBS from 2002 to 2017. The first TV broadcast was watched by 12.4 million people. Every year brought a new spectacle: a show in Cannes in 2000 that raised $3.5 million for Cinema Against AIDS, Sting and Mary J. Blige in 2003, the Spice Girls’ first American TV appearance of their reunion in 2007, London in 2014, Shanghai in 2017. In 2000 Gisele Bündchen walked in the Red Hot Fantasy Bra, which Guinness lists as the most expensive piece of lingerie ever made.

The fall

Fashion changed faster than the show did. The audience shrank from 12.4 million in 2001 to about 3.2 million in 2018. That same year, in an interview with Vogue, the brand’s marketing chief Ed Razek said he did not think the show should cast transgender models and called it “a fantasy”. He apologised, but the comments became the symbol of a brand out of step with its time. Razek left in 2019, and in November of that year the company confirmed the show was cancelled. Reports about Leslie Wexner’s past ties to Jeffrey Epstein added to the pressure, and in 2020 Wexner stepped down as CEO.

The reinvention

In June 2021 the Angels were officially retired and replaced by the VS Collective, a group of women chosen for what they do, not only for how they look: among them Priyanka Chopra, Megan Rapinoe, Paloma Elsesser, Adut Akech and Valentina Sampaio. A few weeks later Victoria’s Secret became a separate company.

The comeback

On 15 October 2024 the show came back in Brooklyn, with Cher, Lisa and Tyla on stage. Gigi Hadid opened, Kate Moss walked, Tyra Banks closed, and Valentina Sampaio and Alex Consani became the first trans models to walk the show. It was streamed instead of broadcast. In 2025 it returned again, with Karol G, Twice, Missy Elliott and Madison Beer, and with the basketball player Angel Reese and the gymnast Sunisa Lee as the first professional athletes on the runway.

And now, Los Angeles. Read our cover story for everything that happened on Sunday night. ✦

Sources: Wikipedia (Victoria’s Secret), Wikipedia (Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show), Victoria’s Secret, “By the numbers”, Daily Front Row (2024 show), Wikipedia (2025 show), Marie Claire (2026 show).