The Marketing of Sexual Beauty and Ambivalence

Introduction

Since the 1977 opening of a single store in San Francisco by Roy Raymond, the underwear business dubbed “Victoria's Secret” has evolved into a chain of about nine hundred stores, achieving a phenomenal financial share of the $12 billion women's lingerie market and transforming the image of intimate apparel on a wider scale than any other retail operation.

The Marketing of Sexual Beauty and Ambivalence

Like many other successful businesses, its long-term success was based on a timely idea: to induce women themselves to replace their girdles and plain, practical white cotton bras and to indulge ...