Victoria's Secret Abandons All Pretense, Stops Selling Actual Clothes

By Kate Dries | April 10, 2014 | 3:20pm

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In a surprising move, Victoria’s Secret has made the decision to focus their efforts entirely on bras, underpantythings and fragrances, scaling back from selling their financially successful clothing to concentrate on specific parts of the female body (the sexy parts).

Women’s Wear Daily reports that those pants, jackets, blazers, etc. that actually have made that company lots of money – “anywhere between $500 million and $750 million of volume” – will no longer be produced, effective immediately. By the fall they should mostly be unavailable. Yes, the company will have to lay some people off.

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Victoria’s Secret will continue to produce apparel that relates to their “core offerings” like beach cover-ups to go with their bathing suits or pajamas to go with their underwear. What won’t be altered is Victoria’s Secret Pink brand and since VS clothes are only sold online and through their catalogs, the stores won’t look any different either.

Why do this? “We know we’re most successful when we remain focused on our core,” said Sharen Jester Turney, CEO of Victoria’s Secret told WWD. “As we look to double the business and continue our international growth, this alignment of apparel categories with the core attributes of Victoria’s Secret and Pink will provide a cohesive brand experience for our customer in stores, online and through our catalogue.”

Considering what an increasingly big deal the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, with its focus entirely on fantastical undergarments, has become for the company, perhaps the writing has been on the wall for awhile. Who knows how much money they’ll save not producing those clothes any longer? As BuzzFeed explained of the Fashion Show in the fall, “Executives at L Brands, Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, refer to it as essentially an hour-long commercial for its biggest business, with plenty of advertising building up to the event and tied to it afterward.” It’s just a little weird, considering how well they’ve been doing. In 2013, the stores were making over $5 billion a year in revenue while Victoria’s Secret Direct (catalog and online sales) brought in $1.5 billion. But the Direct sales were down 3 percent from the year before and a good deal of that could be because the clothes weren’t selling.

One thing is for sure: there will definitely be women who are bummed about VS clothes going away. But before they officially go off into the good night, at least VS going out with a bang and giving the people what they want. [See image at left]

Image via Victoria’s Secret