The grand opening of Victoria’s Secret in Birmingham’s Bullring left onlookers with ‘second-hand embarrassment’ over the weekend.
The store celebrated its return to the West Midlands city with a performance from a dance troupe, who sported the brand’s trademark pink pyjamas, before a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The shop shut down in Birmingham in March 2024 after nine years following woe for the business as the retailer’s UK arm plunged into administration four years earlier.
However, the store didn’t get off to the best start last week as the dancing ensemble and the manager’s inability to cut the ribbon with a pair of oversized scissors left viewers in stitches.
After DJ Mystikle Blue shared footage of the event on TikTok, viewers flocked to the comment section to mock the opening, with one saying: ‘Standard Birmingham behaviour.’
A second wrote: ‘No need for dancing.’ While a third joked: ‘Me trying to use right handed scissors.’
The string of gaffes is just the latest form of embarrassment for the brand that once held the ability to make any model’s career, amid struggling sales and a failed ‘woke’ rebrand.
The lingerie brand rose to fame with its sultry catwalks, which featured the likes of Cara Delevingne and Miranda Kerr as its ‘Angels’.
It was once at the peak of its game, but Victoria’s Secret is now worlds away from its heyday (pictured: Miranda Kerr modelling a $2.5million diamond bra on the runway during the 2011 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York)
The grand opening of the Birmingham store went downhill when the ribbon cutter struggled to use the scissors
Strutting down the catwalk in 10ft white feathered wings, thongs, basques and marabou-trimmed wisps of nothingness, the Victoria’s Secret ‘Angels’ were a global cultural phenomenon.
Uniformly tall, slim, beautiful and stripped to their underwear, they were every heterosexual teenage boy’s fantasy, while their sexy high-fashion glamour appealed to women.
But such marketing came under fire from campaigners, forcing the company to temporarily retire its shows, and while the US company’s move to become a more inclusive retailer gained ‘favourable reviews online, [it] never translated into sales,’ according to The Business of Fashion reporter Cathaleen Chen.
As part of its rebrand, the firm replaced supermodels with a more diverse range of brand ambassadors.
But with the brand’s efforts to promote inclusivity failing to halt falling sales, bosses looked to bring back the firm’s ‘sexiness,’ according to a report by CNN.
Chief executive Martin Waters reportedly said: ‘The reality is we all know the performance of the company and so there must be something that’s not going to plan.
‘It can’t all be at green status. And the harsh reality is that the most important aspect of the work that we had to do in 2023, which was strengthening the core of the company, is not where we need them to be.’
Victoria’s Secret and Pink brand president Greg Unis told investors: ‘Sexiness can be inclusive.’
‘Sexiness can celebrate the diverse experiences of our customers and that’s what we’re focused on,’ the brand executive added.
Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by US businessman Roy Raymond, who set up a small chain of boudoir lingerie shops when he could find no man-friendly women’s stores.
In 1982, he sold the company to clothing magnate Les Wexner for $1million – a fraction of its current value. Raymond later took his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
He chose the name Victoria after Queen Victoria, thinking it sounded refined, and added Secret to refer to what was hidden under the clothes.
Eventually hundreds of stores opened coast to coast, but it was the glitzy launch of the brand’s first blatantly sexy catwalk show at the Plaza Hotel, New York, in 1995 which made the difference.
Broadcast on network TV to 185 countries, millions tuned in to see supermodels Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Tyra Banks and Karen Mulder – among others – stripped back to the barest of essentials.
But eventually the tide began to turn in the late 2010s, when the over-the-top event started to look like a relic of the past in the #MeToo era.
It was further plunged into controversy when marketing chief Ed Razek came under fire for saying that the brand would not cast plus-sized or ‘transsexual’ models because the show is a ‘fantasy.’
The lingerie giant’s parent company, L Brands, confirmed in November 2019 that its famous show wouldn’t take place. The decision was part of a move to ‘evolve the messaging of [the company],’ Fortune reported at the time.
Purchases by women aged 18 to 49 had been declining for several years prior to the move.
Managing director for the UK, Ellis Quinn, is currently attempting to rebuild the brand, with multiple new openings on UK high streets.
And the return to the brand’s original ethos appears to be working somewhat over in the States, with the brand this week recording total sales of $6.553billion for fiscal year 2025, up 5 per cent, according to Fashion Network.
