Victoria's Secret Bets on 'Sexy' Rebrand as International Push Looms

By Priya Raman

Victoria's Secret generated $6.5 billion in revenue last year, and CEO Hillary Super says the international piece of that — currently 20 percent — could double. She offered no timeline for that expansion, and the company is in a quiet period, so the claim rests on assertion rather than disclosed figures.

Speaking with Evan Clark, deputy managing editor at WWD, at the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit, Super marked just over two years in the top job. She arrived from Savage X Fenty, a lingerie-adjacent but structurally different business, and found a company she describes as culturally stalled.

"I could see that the brands had lost some of their luster. I could see that the brands had commingled in a lot of ways," Super said of the interview process. "You really couldn't tell where one brand started and the other began."

What did she actually find inside?

Super says the internal picture beat external expectations. She cites a workforce of 30,000 people, many with long tenures. Store associates with 15, 20 or 25 years of service were common, she said, and that institutional knowledge signaled brand loyalty.

But the same audit produced a blunt diagnosis of management culture: "the culture was stuck, and it was a little bit of a culture of fear, a little bit of being on the back foot and a little bit of being afraid to be who we're truly meant to be."

Her remedy was focus. She inherited what she called 13, 14 or 15 corporate priorities — "and all those priorities had babies." The executive team, in her words, was "a group of people with a shared title running individual functions versus a first team." The fix: fewer priorities, repeated messaging, and buy-in around two brands — Victoria's Secret and Pink.

How concrete is the turnaround evidence?

Two moves carry measurable weight. The company changed its stock ticker to VSXY, which Super said produced a significant market reaction — though she did not quantify the move. And the Victoria's Secret runway show returned "in full force," with the most recent edition the third under her tenure.

On viewership, Super claimed early results. "We have already exceeded viewership for the entire year in less than a week," she said of the show's social response, while declining to give numbers due to the quiet period (a regulatory window restricting financial disclosure ahead of earnings). The claim is directional, not audited.

To amplify the show, the retailer ran a nationwide model search in malls across America and produced a docuseries airing on YouTube. Super framed the learnings around "human experiences and connection" — marketing language, with no attached conversion or sales data.

What is the strategic core?

Super's philosophical shift is recommitting to "sexy" as brand territory. "There's no one else who can do sexy like Victoria's Secret," she said, pushing back on press framing: "Is it OK to be sexy again? It's just like it's never not OK to be sexy."

The redefinition matters for merchandising breadth. Rather than a small group defining "a singular look and a singular type of woman," she said the company is "building a world of sexy" and inviting customers to choose — a positioning she ties to being a multigenerational business.

The Angels, she confirmed, remain commercially important despite earlier questions about their role in a social media era. The customer, she said, cares about "the Angels, about sexiness, about glamour, about accessible luxury."

What comes next through 2027?

Super laid out a staged plan: year one was team, talent and structure; the past year was enablement of future growth; next year is international rollout. She flagged remaining opportunity in bras — "tons of market share to continue to gain" — continued buildout of Pink as a stand-alone brand, and beauty innovation she described as only now reaching market.

The international doubling claim is the headline number, but it arrives without capital expenditure detail, market-by-market sequencing, or sourcing and supply-chain implications for vendors serving a wider geographic footprint. For suppliers and licensing partners, the unanswered question is what "rolling it out to international" means in orders and lead times — none of which the quiet-period disclosure window will clarify until the company reports.