Money Talks: The Rise and Fall of Victoria’s Secret

Slate Money

Slate Podcasts

Investing, Business

4.3 • 988 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Money Talks: how did Victoria’s Secret go from hot to not? Emily Peck is joined by Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez, authors of Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon to discuss the origins of the ubiquitous bra retailer, its role in the rise of fast fashion, and how the brand successfully reflected the culture–until it suddenly didn’t. Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a bonus podcast series from Slate Money, where we chat with brilliant and interesting people.
0:16.6	I'm Emily Peck of Axios and I'm also co-host of Slate Money. And today, we're talking about
0:23.2	bras. Well, not really, but I thought that I would get your attention if I said bras. So I'm here
0:30.1	with Lauren Sherman, a fashion correspondent at Puck. Hi, Lauren. Hi, thanks for having me. And I'm
0:35.8	here with Chantal Fernandez, a features writer for the cut. Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm here with Chantelle Fernandez, a features writer for The Cut.
0:38.9	Hi, Emily.
0:39.5	Thank you so much for having us.
0:41.2	They're the authors of this great new book called Selling Sexy, Victoria's Secret and
0:45.8	the unraveling of an American icon.
0:48.3	It's this great dive into not only the history of Victoria's Secret, but sort of
0:53.1	feminist culture and its evolution over the
0:55.3	past, I don't know, 50 years, the golden age of retail, how we got fast fashion in the first place.
1:02.7	So at the beginning, all I really knew about Victoria's Secret's sort of downfall was that Lex Wexner,
1:10.2	its founder, which he isn't Victoria's Secret's founder even.
1:13.9	So I was right off the bat wrong about that.
1:15.7	But I knew that Lex Wexner maybe had ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
1:19.7	But that's just not the story at all.
1:22.1	This book is such a deep dive into so many things.
1:25.1	And when we come back, I want to start at the beginning with the company's sort of humble start
1:30.1	back in the 1970s, you know, a story that involves a trip to a 1970s Times Square where a husband
1:38.0	was buying vibrators for his wife.
1:40.4	But for work.
	...

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