The Man Behind the Empire
Leslie Wexner bought Victoria's Secret for $1 million in 1982 and built it into a $7 billion annual revenue retail empire. His story is one of the most dramatic in American business: extraordinary success followed by devastating scandal.
The Purchase
In 1982, Wexner was already a successful retail executive — he had founded The Limited in 1963 with a $5,000 loan from his aunt. When he visited Roy Raymond's small Victoria's Secret chain in San Francisco, he saw potential that Raymond himself had missed.
Wexner bought Victoria's Secret and its six stores for just $1 million. Within two years, the brand was generating $500 million in annual revenue.
The Transformation
Raymond had designed Victoria's Secret as a place where men felt comfortable buying lingerie for their wives. Wexner flipped the concept entirely: he made it a store where women bought lingerie for themselves.
Key moves:
- Redesigned stores with bright pink branding
- Launched the mail-order catalogue (which became the most successful in retail history)
- Created the Angels program — supermodels as brand ambassadors
- Launched the VS Fashion Show (1995) — which became a global television event
- Positioned the brand as "accessible luxury" — aspirational but affordable
The Peak
By the 2000s, Victoria's Secret controlled 32% of the U.S. lingerie market — more than the next five competitors combined. The annual Fashion Show attracted millions of viewers. The brand was valued at over $7 billion.
The Fall
Wexner's downfall came from an unlikely source: his decades-long relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein.
- Epstein had served as Wexner's personal financial advisor since the 1980s
- Multiple reports emerged that Epstein had abused his connection to Wexner by posing as a VS model recruiter to approach young women
- The Hulu documentary Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons (2022) detailed the connections
- February 2020: Wexner resigned as CEO of L Brands
The Aftermath
Wexner's resignation marked the end of an era. Victoria's Secret has since attempted to reinvent itself — replacing Angels with the VS Collective, expanding sizes, shifting from "sexy for others" to "confidence for yourself."
Whether the brand can fully separate itself from Wexner's legacy remains an open question.
He bought a company for $1 million and turned it into a $7 billion empire. Then it all unraveled.