The lingerie, beauty and apparel retailer behind Victoria's Secret, PINK and Adore Me - independent since 2021, and rebuilding on its own terms.
Few retailers are as instantly recognizable as Victoria's Secret, and few have swung as widely between dominance and doubt. The company that grew from a single Palo Alto storefront in 1977 into the defining name in American lingerie spent the late 2010s watching its cultural authority erode - falling fashion-show ratings, shifting ideas about beauty, and leadership scandal. What is happening now is quieter and, in its way, more interesting: a large, mature brand deciding to change who it makes clothes for.
Victoria's Secret & Co. designs, markets and sells intimates, apparel, beauty and fragrance under three core brands - Victoria's Secret, PINK and Victoria's Secret Beauty - plus the digital-first label Adore Me, acquired in 2022. It reaches shoppers through roughly 1,300 company-operated North American stores, a global network of partner-run international locations, and one of the most-visited intimate-apparel e-commerce sites in the world.
The scale is substantial: about $6.55 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and roughly 31,000 employees. But the more telling number is smaller. Comparable sales rose about 5% in fiscal 2025 - the strongest growth since the company became independent from L Brands in 2021. Turnarounds rarely announce themselves with fireworks. They show up as small numbers moving in the right direction.
At its core, Victoria's Secret sells bras and panties. The rest - sleepwear, activewear, shapewear, body sprays, fragrance - radiates outward from that foundation.
The product range is deliberately wide. On the intimates side, the assortment spans push-up, wireless, minimizer, full-coverage and sports bras, bralettes, and increasingly practical categories like nursing, adaptive and mastectomy bras. Matching sets, corsets, thongs and shapewear round out the core. PINK, launched in 2002, carries the same DNA into loungewear, activewear and campus-friendly apparel aimed at a younger shopper.
Victoria's Secret Beauty is the other engine. Body mists, fragrance sprays, lotions, body care and cosmetics turn scent into a reliable, giftable draw - the kind of lower-price, high-frequency purchase that keeps customers coming back between bra fittings. Signature fragrance collections and travel-size formats anchor the beauty floor of nearly every store.
Adore Me adds a fourth dimension: a direct-to-consumer, size-inclusive brand built for digital-first shopping, with a personalized, subscription-style model that the legacy business is still learning from.
Fiscal 2025 marked the company's strongest sales growth since it became independent - a modest but meaningful reversal.
Figures are approximate, drawn from company reports and public financial coverage. Bars are scaled for illustration.
From teens shopping PINK to adults buying core intimates, beauty and fragrance - reached across ~1,300 stores, international partner locations, and a major e-commerce operation with an Instagram audience above 70 million.
Buying a bra that actually fits is a genuinely hard, personal task. The company leans on fit quizzes, size guides and expanded ranges - from adaptive to nursing - to make the category less intimidating.
After years of a narrow beauty ideal, the brand has been broadening who appears in its campaigns and on its runway, from curve models to athletes - repairing trust as much as selling product.
Digital-native rivals like Savage X Fenty, Skims, ThirdLove and Aerie built their followings on inclusivity and community from day one. Victoria's Secret is doing something harder: retrofitting those values onto a brand with enormous existing reach and a complicated reputation. Its advantages are physical and cultural - a store footprint few competitors can match, and a name that still carries mainstream recognition.
The clearest differentiator remains the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Paused in 2019 as its ratings fell and its imagery drew criticism, the show returned in 2024-2025 as a marketing asset no start-up can replicate - now recast with a wider range of bodies on the runway. It is spectacle repurposed as a statement of intent.
The other edge is portfolio breadth. Few competitors span mass-reach intimates, a youth brand, a beauty and fragrance business, and a digital-first acquisition under one roof. That breadth is also the challenge: focus is harder when you sell everything from mastectomy bras to holiday gift sets.
The flagship intimates line - bras across every construction, panties, matching sets, corsets and shapewear - plus sleepwear and swim.
A younger-skewing brand of loungewear, activewear, bras, panties and campus apparel, central to reaching the next generation.
Fragrances, body mists and sprays, lotions, body care and cosmetics - the high-frequency, giftable side of the business.
A size-inclusive, direct-to-consumer digital brand with personalized, subscription-style shopping.
Pajama sets, nightgowns, sleep shirts, robes and seasonal cozy collections.
Leggings, sports bras, activewear sets and seasonal swimwear extending the brand into everyday movement.
Victoria's Secret & Co. is a vertically integrated specialty retailer: it designs, sources, markets and sells its own product. Most revenue comes directly from customers - through company-operated North American stores and a large e-commerce and mobile business - supplemented by international partner and franchise arrangements, and the digital Adore Me operation.
Its expertise is concentrated where the category is hardest: bra design, fit science and sizing, and the brand-marketing machine - anchored by the Fashion Show and a vast social presence - that drives traffic across every channel. Technology partners including Salesforce Commerce Cloud and buy-now-pay-later providers such as Afterpay underpin the digital storefront.
Roy and Gaye Raymond open the first Victoria's Secret in Palo Alto, California.
Leslie Wexner's The Limited acquires the brand for about $1 million and reorients it toward women.
A younger, college-age sub-brand launches and quickly becomes a growth pillar.
The televised show is cancelled amid falling ratings and cultural criticism.
L Brands spins Victoria's Secret into an independent NYSE company (VSCO) and renames itself Bath & Body Works.
A $400 million deal brings a size-inclusive, digital-first brand into the portfolio.
Hillary Super, previously CEO of Savage X Fenty, is appointed to lead the turnaround.
The "Reawakening" Fashion Show returns and fiscal 2025 delivers the strongest growth since the spin-off.
Victoria's Secret sits at the center of the U.S. intimate-apparel market as its largest specialty retailer - the incumbent that newer, values-led brands defined themselves against. That position cuts both ways. It brings unmatched recognition, real estate and a beauty business rivals lack; it also brings the burden of past associations that a Skims or an Aerie never had to shed.
The strategic question the company is answering is whether an incumbent can absorb the lessons of its disruptors - inclusivity, digital-first shopping, community - without losing the scale and spectacle that made it famous. Fiscal 2025's results suggest the answer, for now, is a cautious yes.
Bras, panties, lingerie, sleepwear, activewear and shapewear under Victoria's Secret and PINK, plus fragrance and body care under Victoria's Secret Beauty. It also owns the digital brand Adore Me.
Yes. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker VSCO after spinning off from L Brands in 2021.
Roy Raymond and Gaye Raymond founded it in 1977 in Palo Alto, California; Leslie Wexner's The Limited acquired it in 1982.
In Columbus, Ohio, United States.
Fiscal 2025 revenue was about $6.55 billion, up from roughly $6.22 billion the prior year - its strongest sales growth since the 2021 spin-off.
Sources: company press releases and investor materials, SEC filings, Wikipedia, and reporting from Bloomberg, WWD, Retail TouchPoints, Glossy and DesignRush. Figures are approximate where noted.