Distancing Victoria’s Secret from the push-up bra aesthetic it projected for many years won’t be easy.
The brand, which was little more than a nascent mail-order firm with just a few stores when Wexner bought it in 1982 for $1 million, has lost ground to rivals whose products are sold as more comfortable and body-positive. Dwindling traffic in American malls also has hurt sales.
And Victoria’s Secret has struggled to fend off criticism over the image fueled by its fashion shows and catalogs. This month, the New York Times chronicled misogyny, bullying and harassment among its models, cultivated by a senior executive who was close with Wexner.
The annual fashion show was canceled last year.
“Modern-day retail looks very different than 20th century retail,” said Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
Meeting Epstein
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Wexner started working in his parents’ clothing store and eventually struck out on his own. With the loan from his aunt, he founded The Limited in 1963 and opened his first store in a Columbus suburb.
The company evolved to become one of several specialty retail chains that took hold in malls across the country over the following years, and Wexner proved a prescient acquirer of brands, including Abercrombie & Fitch and Lane Bryant.
L Brands went public in 1969 and Wexner was a billionaire by the 1980s, a person familiar with his finances has said. A self-proclaimed workhorse, Wexner preferred to focus on his job rather than managing his money, according to people who knew him at the time.
Then Epstein showed up.
The former math teacher and Bear Stearns Cos. banker became a central figure in the billionaire’s life. The pair met in the late 1980s in Palm Beach, Florida, when Epstein was hustling for clients of his money-management firm that he said catered only to billionaires. The New Yorker and Wexner, one of the nation’s richest people at the time, struck up a friendship that seemed odd to some who were close to the fashion mogul.