The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was an entertainment monster for 20 years. Starting in the late 1990s with webcasts that fractured the Internet and continuing for two decades with high-end productions featuring supermodels in million-dollar bras, entertainers such as Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, these prime-time specials often drew 10 million+ viewers per year. They were pop culture phenomena.
By 2019, however, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the changing times and reports of alleged harassment within the organization — not to mention company chairman Les Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein — the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was considered to be a pink dinosaur and was rendered extinct. The stock plunged some 40 percent, dozens of retail outlets were sold, and the corporate structure and marketing strategies were completely revamped.
