Aerie

Aerie is the intimates and loungewear brand of American Eagle Outfitters, launched from the company's Pittsburgh headquarters in 2006. It is best known for the #AerieREAL campaign: since January 2014 Aerie has not retouched the women in its photographs, and over the following decade it grew from a modest mall sub-brand into a business with about $1.93 billion in annual revenue.

A dorm-wear line for American Eagle's customer

American Eagle announced "aerie by American Eagle" in February 2006. The first range was plain and practical: bras, panties and what the company called dormwear, all aimed at its existing 15 to 25 year old shopper. The line went into American Eagle stores that fall, and the first standalone aerie shop opened in August 2006 in Greenville, South Carolina, followed by two more test stores before the year was out.

The concept spread fast through American malls. By December 2010 there were 147 standalone stores in the United States and Canada. Yet the brand held only about 2 percent of the lingerie market in 2011, and for most of its first eight years it looked like what it was: a younger, cheaper cousin of Victoria's Secret, selling bralettes, T-shirt bras and cotton briefs under the same glossy photography as everyone else.

The 2014 decision on retouching

In January 2014 Aerie stopped retouching its models. The spring 2014 campaign, announced under the name "aerie Real", used women of different sizes and skin tones and left in the beauty marks, tattoos and stretch marks that lingerie advertising had always smoothed away. A bra guide on the site showed the same styles on real bodies across cup sizes 30A to 40DD.

The idea was hardly new in advertising. What made it stick was that a mass lingerie brand did it permanently and kept doing it while its larger rival was still selling Angels on a runway. The campaign traveled on the #aeriereal hashtag, and Aerie became the first national retailer to sponsor the National Eating Disorders Association, as primary sponsor of its NEDA Walk.

The Role Models

The faces changed over time. The actress Emma Roberts served as an early celebrity ambassador. The model Iskra Lawrence became the first #AerieREAL Role Model, and in January 2018 the gymnast Aly Raisman, the actress Yara Shahidi and the singer Rachel Platten joined her, appearing in campaigns and at in-store talks. Later rounds added women with disabilities and chronic illnesses, photographed with the same no-edit rule.

What the numbers showed

Sales are where this story stops being about marketing. Trade coverage put Aerie's sales growth at about 20 percent in 2015, the first full year under the new policy. The brand then ran a long streak of double-digit quarterly growth: when it passed $1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2020, American Eagle said it was Aerie's 25th consecutive quarter of double-digit gains. Fourth-quarter comparable sales that year were up 29 percent, with digital sales up 75 percent, at a time when much of mall retail was shut.

By January 2021 American Eagle ran 175 standalone Aerie stores and 179 combined American Eagle and Aerie units. Aerie's chief creative officer and global brand president, Jennifer Foyle, set the next target at $2 billion.

OFFLINE by Aerie

The growth since then has come partly from outside the lingerie drawer. OFFLINE by Aerie, an activewear sub-brand of leggings, sports bras and fleece, launched in summer 2020. Its first standalone store opened in Nashville that fall, and a shop-in-shop format followed in 2021. Foyle called activewear "a killer category" for the brand.

Aerie in 2025

For fiscal 2025 Aerie reported revenue of $1.93 billion, up from $1.74 billion the year before, with comparable sales up 9 percent. Its US headquarters remain at American Eagle's offices on Hot Metal Street in Pittsburgh's SouthSide Works. The company still does not retouch its campaign photographs, twelve years after the policy began, and that rule has outlasted every ambassador who helped launch it.

Last updated October 1, 2026