Victoria's Secret
American retailer of lingerie
Victoria's Secret is an American lingerie, clothing and beauty retailer. Founded in 1977 by Stanford graduate student Roy Raymond and his wife Gaye, the company's five lingerie stores were sold to Les Wexner in 1982. Wexner rapidly expanded into American shopping malls, expanding the company into 350 stores nationally with sales of $1 billion by the early 1990s, when Victoria's Secret became the largest lingerie retailer in the United States.
Since 1995, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show has been a major part of the brand's image, featuring an annual runway spectacle of models promoted by the company as fantasy Angels. The 1990s saw the company's further expansion throughout shopping malls, along with the introduction of the 'miracle bra', the brand Body by Victoria, and the development of a line of fragrances and cosmetics. In 2002, Victoria's Secret announced the launch of PINK, a brand that was aimed to teenagers and young women. Starting in 2008, Victoria's Secret expanded internationally, with retail outlets within international airports, franchises in major cities overseas, and company-owned stores throughout Canada and the UK.
By 2016, Victoria's Secret's market share had begun to decrease, due to competition from other brands that embraced a wider range of sizes and a growing consumer preference for athleisure. In 2016, the company canceled the circulation of its catalog. The brand struggled to maintain its market position following criticism and controversy over the unsavory behavior and business practices of corporate leadership under Wexner and Ed Razek. As of May 2020, with over 1,070 stores, Victoria's Secret remained the largest lingerie retailer in the United States.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Victoria's Secret” as american retailer of lingerie. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american retailer of lingerie. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q332477. VIAF identifies the subject as 133781201. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1982, 1995 and 2002.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Victoria's Secret” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.