Where Was the Victoria Secret Fashion Show 2016
When the annual Victoria's Underground Fashion Show is held on Tuesday, merely ane particular woman will exist more prominent than the runway models: Victoria herself.
The company got its start when man of affairs Roy Raymond was trying to shop for lingerie for his married woman. He'd gone to a department store to make his purchase, but to find himself deeply uncomfortable—and made even more and so by saleswomen scrutinizing his presence there. "When I tried to purchase lingerie for my wife," Raymond told Newsweek in 1981, "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." The Stanford MBA grad saw an opportunity in his discomfort and in 1977 borrowed $80,000 to open Victoria's Underground as a store designed specifically to make men comfortable when buying lingerie for their wives.
But Victoria was not Raymond'due south wife.
Then who was she? No ane. Or maybe Queen Victoria, depending on how you lot look at it.
The name is actually more most the chain's decor than it is about any item woman. In an endeavour to brand the stores seem "private" and "fanciful," every bit Raymond put it to Vogue in 1992, he and his wife Gaye designed the shop with a Victorian-inspired style. The await was meant to impart the sense of form and nobility associated with the Victorian era, and the Queen for which it's named. They chose 'Victoria' to emphasize the historic association, and 'Underground' to double upwards on the sense of intimacy for shoppers.
Merely the implication that there was a real Victoria meant that customers sent mail to her. "Some people send in romantic poetry, and somebody sent her a gift certificate," Raymond told Women's Vesture Daily in 1981. "It keeps the image live."
In 1982 Raymond sold his business to Leslie Wexner of The Express (at present L Brands) for about $i million. By then Raymond had already plant that women were notwithstanding a sizable portion of the Victoria'south Secret audition, making up well-nigh 70% of in-store shoppers and 50% of purchases in 1981, per WWD. Later the sale the focus on women buying lingerie for themselves only increased, transforming Victoria's Hole-and-corner into its electric current form.
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