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CLEANS UP?
These are specially selected portions of images currently found on the official VICTORIA'S SECRET web site. Are they too sexy for the lingerie marketplace these days? Hmmm. Could we have a vote on that? Guys? Whadda ya think? |
Is the famous lingerie chain really "too sexy"?
of TheColumnists.com
"A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally."
--Lillian Day
It’s not enough that gas prices are nearly at $4 a gallon, the economy is tanking and my damn khakis for some reason continue to shrink around the waistline. No, this latest development on the world scene goes beyond that sort of piffle: Victoria’s Secret has decided it’s not going to be so sexy any more.
The chain has gotten “too sexy,” chief executive Sharen J. Turney says.
Victoria’s Secret “too sexy?” General Motors is too automobile-centered? Tiffany’s pays too much attention to jewelry?
“We have moved off of our brand heritage,” Turney told The Washington Post recently. “We use the word ‘sexy’ a lot and really have forgotten the ultra-feminine.”
Oh, right. Victoria’s Secret has forgotten the ultra-feminine. That, um, clothing one sees in the Victoria’s Secret window displays at the mall doesn’t conform to the “brand heritage” and is not ultra-feminine. Here’s a question: If it isn’t, what is? Bustles?
As you might by now have guessed, it all comes down to money.
In Victoria’s Secret stores open for at least a year, sales declined by 8 percent during the fourth quarter of last year, even though revenue rose to $1.89 billion. That’s a lot of D-cups, but apparently not enough.
An unidentified source told The Post that in the wake of the recent sales figures, the company brass has decided Victoria’s Secret had become “too provocative,” and was seeking to return to “the softer side of sexy,” whatever that is. Another analyst said sex perhaps doesn’t always sell to women as well as it does to men. And then there was the contretemps a while back when the company opened a new Victoria’s Secret store in Tyson’s Corner, a Washington D.C. suburb, and parents were upset. They persuaded the company to dial back the temperature of the window displays.
That’s all very well, but it seems to me there is still a lot to be said for iconic. Victoria’s Secret getting all shy about sexy is a little like Dick Cheney doing karaoke.
Exactly what direction the “Still Sort of Sexy, but No Vroom! Vroom!” sales strategy will take is not entirely clear, but there still seems to be some hope.
At last word, the company is still selling what it calls its Very Sexy line of unmentionables, swimming suits and makeup. And there is still the Sexy Little Things line, hanging in there.
Moreover, Victoria’s Secret’s Super Bowl ad featured a gloriously sexy young woman wearing a black lace top and not much else. It was the most-watched spot on the broadcast, with 103.7 million viewers.
So it appears that Victoria’s Secret can be depended upon to at least be a shapely shadow of its formerly peek-a-boo self. But there is a principle involved here, isn’t there? Not letting down the side, and all that? And what’s to become of the fantasies of millions of adolescent males? In a rapidly changing world, there must still be standards, of tradition, of holding the line for the tried and true.
I think Victoria ought to remember that it didn’t get to be a universally admired company on the basis of flannel nighties. And if we really are headed for a recession, we could all use a little pepping up. Especially wives who want to resurrect the libidos of their middle-aged husbands, home from a weary day of selling plumbing fixtures.
Back to basics, I say. And Victoria has great basics.
©2008 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos are courtesy of Victoria's Secret. They are cropped versions of photos currently found on the chain's official web site. This column first posted March 17, 2008.
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