POPULAR US clothing and beauty products giant, Victoria’s Secret, has hired Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and American soccer star Megan Rapinoe along with five others in a major rebranding move.
Under the brand’s revamped strategy, the women will appear on a podcast and in marketing materials.
Victoria's Secret, known once upon a time for its catwalk shows featuring some of the world's most popular models, has come up with a new way of promoting the brand following plunging sales and a backlash over its lack of diversity.
Chopra and Rapinoe will join Sudanese-Australian model Adut Akech, freestyle skier Eileen Gu, Brazilian transgender model Valentina Sampaio, plus-size model Paloma Elsesser and journalist Amanda de Cadenet, to host a 10-episode podcast where the women will share their stories.
This marks a big change in the brand’s positioning, as it has been traditionally promoted by a roster of high-profile supermodels, with those under contract to the company known as Victoria's Secret 'Angels'.
The brand “needed to stop being about what men want and to be about what women want,” Victoria’s Secret’s brand chief executive Martin Waters told the New York Times.
“I've known that we needed to change this brand for a long time, we just haven't had the control of the company to be able to do it,” he added.
The US lingerie giant was overshadowed in recent years by brands that openly accepted both physical and ethnic diversity.
The brand was criticised for its objectification of women and had to abandon its famed fashion show in 2019.
Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by the US businessman Roy Raymond, who in 1982, sold the company to clothing magnate Les Wexner for $1million (£723,889).
He chose the name Victoria after Queen Victoria, thinking it sounded refined, and added Secret to refer to what was hidden under the clothes.
