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Several hours after L Brands announced a sweeping diversity-oriented makeover of its Victoria’s Secret brand on 16 June, executives at competitor Adore Me huddled in an emergency meeting to assess the likely business impact. They combed through the Victoria’s Secret website to search for clues about promised extended sizing. More fundamentally, they pondered whether shoppers will buy into the idea that the former bastion of Caucasian, heterosexual, thin-bodied goddesses, oriented for the male gaze, has suddenly embraced a diverse and real-bodied female universe.

Structurally, the company is also changing. By August, Victoria’s Secret will be rebranded as Victoria’s Secret & Co., spun off from parent company L Brands and with a new board of seven members, including six women. 

It remains the American lingerie industry’s dominant player, with 1,460 owned or partner-operated stores and $11.8 billion in revenues in 2020 (8.3 per cent down on a year earlier). So when Victoria’s Secret comes out swinging with dramatic plans for a fresh new image, its smaller rivals must reassess their own strategies and plans for innovation. “It’s not an existential threat, but it’s definitely top of mind,” says Ranjan Roy, Adore Me’s vice president of strategy and one of the executives at the company’s 16 June meeting.

Similar assessments have been taking place among myriad US lingerie brands that have stolen market share from the once-dominant brand over the past decade. At Aerie, global brand president Jen Foyle noted that US soccer star Megan Rapinoe is among the diverse group of brand ambassadors to have signed on with Victoria’s Secret as part of its new “VS Collective”. That echoes Aerie’s own choice of brand ambassador. “We have Aly Raisman — how about that?” Foyle said, heralding the famous US gymnast.

Two-time Olympian Aly Raisman was captain of both the 2012 and 2016 winning US women's Olympic gymnastics teams.

The US intimates industry has transformed over the past decade as a crop of new brands have chipped away at Victoria’s Secret’s dominance by offering more sizes, showing inclusive skin colours, ages and body shapes in imagery, and appealing to diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. The sense that Victoria’s Secret was losing touch was highlighted when the Ohio-based company cancelled its annual Angels fashion show in 2019, perceived as a public admission that culture had left it behind.

Startups like Third Love, Cuup, Savage by Fenty and Playful Promises have grown by considering what Victoria’s Secret long failed to address: the wide spectrum of women’s needs and desires for lingerie — with complex sizing, embracing body-real images and offering attractively designed but necessary products such as maternity and mastectomy bras.