Victorias Secret

The 'Angels' are chosen, "By having clearly spectacular physical gifts, and... also great energy, great personality. To be an 'Angel' and to be a supermodel for Victorias Secret, you have to appeal to women, not to men.", as stated by Edward Razek on VH1 Victorias Secret Uncovered 2004.



In May 2007, the Victorias Secret Angels which includes Adriana Lima, Selita Ebanks, Alessandra Ambrosio, Izabel Goulart and Karolina Kurkova were chosen to be part of People Magazine's annual 100 Most Beautiful People in the World. The 'Angels' are among the worlds highest paid models with its multi-million dollar a year contract. On November 13, 2007, Victorias Secret Angels became the first commercial icons to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Welcome to Victoria's Secret

Victoria's Secret was started in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus Roy Raymond, who felt embarrassed trying to purchase lingerie for his wife in very public and awkward department store environment. He opened the first store at Stanford Shopping Center, and quickly followed it with a mail order catalog and 3 other stores. The Stores were meant to create a comfortable environment for men, wood paneled walls, Victorian details, and helpful sales staff. Instead of racks of bras and panties in every size, there were single styles, paired together, and mounted on the wall in frames. Men could browse for styles and then sales staff would help estimate the appropriate size, pulling from inventory in the back. In 1982, after 5 years of operations, Roy Raymond sold the company to The Limited. The Limited kept the personalized image of Victorias Secret intact. 



Victorias Secret was rapidly expanded into the Americas malls throughout the 1980s. The company was able to vend a widened range of products such as shoes, evening wear, perfumes among others with its mail catalog issued eight times annually. By the early 1990s, Victorias Secret had become the largest American lingerie retailer topping the billion dollar mark. On July 10, 2007, Limited Brands Inc. sold 75% of Limited clothing chain to buyout firm Sun Capital Partners Inc. to focus and boost sales growth on Victorias Secret lingerie stores and Bath & Body Works units, which provided 72% of revenue in 2006 and almost all the firm's profit. Victorias Secret is a specialty retailer of women's intimate apparel. It has about 1,000 Victorias Secret lingerie stores and 100 stand-alone Victorias Secret Beauty Stores in the US, mostly mall-based. It sells bras, panties, hosiery, beauty products, sleepwear, and more. Victorias Secret mails more than 400 million of its catalogs per year. Under pressure from environmentalist groups, Victorias Secret's parent firm and a conservation group have reached an agreement to make the lingerie retailer's catalog more environmentally friendly in 2006.



The catalogue will no longer be made of pulp supplied from any woodland caribou habitat range in Canada, unless it has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The catalogs will also be made of 10 per cent recycled paper from post-consumer waste. Victorias Secret is now building its image with a fairly conservative, middle-class shopper in mind and avoided any connotations of sleaziness which lingerie might carry. The company gained notoriety in the early 1990s after it began to use supermodels in its advertising and fashion shows. Throughout the past decade, it refused to follow the celebrity trend, turning down at least one celebrity a month begging to model the brand. Victoria's Secret Angels are the most visible members of the modeling team and are the spokespersons for Victoria's Secret. The Angels debuted in 1999 on the 4th annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Maria Inés Rivero, Adriana Lima, Heidi Klum, Rebecca Romijn, and Tyra Banks are among the "Angels" used in the original promotion. The 'Angels' are chosen, "By having clearly spectacular physical gifts, and... also great energy, great personality.