For Love & Lemons returns to Victoria’s Secret for a Holiday 2019 collaboration. The campaign stars Ophelie Guillermand, Solange van Doorn and Tami Williams styled by Ashley Glorioso in a collection that includes lace bustiers, rhinestone embellished bras and high-waisted panties.

Photographer Zoey Grossman delivers a modern, poetic, amusing, engaged, confident and female-centric sensuality in the Love & Lemons brand positioning that’s doing far more for Victoria’s Secret than VS is doing for the boarding school with heart LA brand..

As a trendmeister, I could see VS becoming For Love & Lemons, if the brand can’t reclaim its position of integrity and relevance.Yes, I just wrote that For Love & Lemons is giving Victoria’s Secret a welcome lift. In this time and place, the For Love & Lemons brand does more for VS — without injuring itself — than VS does For Love & Lemons.

Of course, I’m not privy to the financial arrangements here, but from a branding viewpoint, For Love & Lemons has the marketing muscle, not VS.

Over the weekend, the notoriously-accurate NY Post Page Six speculated that the Angels are on the way out. At the very least, these once multi-million-dollar models have fallen to earth writes Page Six in words that I embrace.

Are Angels Falling to Earth?

Admittedly, I was opposed to the Angels from day one, because they created a wedge between our customers and our Victoria’s Secret brand. People will argue that the Angels had a good run and so did VS stock. I argued then and now that my resistance to the Angels was not one of opposing top models. I threatened to quit my executive position over colleagues backing off on using Naomi Campbell solo in our holiday windows.

Rather, Victoria’s Secret enjoyed a trusted relationship with American women and their sexuality. Suddenly, the Angels came to define the brand and the VS fashion show became increasingly show girl and outlandish. It became a Las Vegas spectacle that expressed female sexuality through the eyes of men like Ed Razek, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and a testosterone fleet of Wall Street guys.

For every Angel like Adriana Lima and Sara Sampaio who insist that Victoria’s Secret fashion shows and collapsing brand positioning were empowering for women, you have top models like Bella Hadid, Doutzen Kroes, Gisele and Karlie Kloss saying that they were uncomfortable and debased (my word, not theirs) by the experience.

Can Victoria’s Secret Still ‘Make’ a Model’s Career?

There are many reasons why it’s time to retire the Angels — OR make them well-rounded women helping the world and not consumed with feathers and glitz. This was my compromise position in arguing against the Angels, but VS notoriously tries to stay out of politics and that includes doing good in the world.

I’ve heard from other sources that the Page Six assertion that new Angels are paid as little as $100,000 annually. There’s no doubt that top salaries did range $4-5 million, falling to $1 million with an expansion of the cast. If a brand can launch one’s career, it might be an acceptable sum for a newbie and her agency to accept $100,000, IF you believe that a VS contract will help your career more than hang a scarlet letter around your neck.

“It was [once] every girl’s dream when they got into the modeling industry,” model agent Victor Del Toro told The Post.

“They wanted to be a Victoria’s Secret Angel. Over my 14 years, when I ask [new models] what they want to do in their career, that’s what they say. I’ve heard it over 1,000 times. And just to get to the show casting was a huge deal.”

Who In the World Is BooHoo?

Last week, four Victoria’s Secret Angels — Josephine Skriver, Elsa Hosk, Jasmine Tookes and Romee Strijd — posed together on a Los Angeles red carpet to celebrate their most recent campaign, writes Page Six. This event was for the holiday collection from Boohoo, “a down-market online fast-fashion retailer.” Boohoo????? Yikes!

I presumed that Lily Aldridge was gone from Victoria’s Secret as she revved up her Ralph Lauren relationship and her own brand to build. Victoria’s Secret and Ralph Lauren do not tango well. The post writes that Behati Prinsloo also let her contract lapse. Note that VS may say that they chose not to renew either model.

At this point the saga of Victoria’s Secret — one I understand well as a top merchant, first head of product development and first fashion director — is a case study in brand positioning. AOC will follow the VS story even more intently than we have until now.

I’m very supportive of new VS CEO John Mehas, but that Boohoo move is a curve ball. Alright, I’m forgiven for not knowing Boohoo. Boohoo.com is a UK-based online fashion retailer, aimed at 16–30 year olds. The business was founded in 2006, and had sales in FY2018 of almost £580m. It specializes in its own brand fashion clothing, with over 36,000 products., according to Google.

In 2018, Reuters wrote: “Boohoo (BOOH.L), the fast-growing British online fashion retailer, has appointed a Primark executive as its new CEO to drive the brand’s global expansion, on a pay package that could earn him almost 58 million pounds in five years. . . John Lyttle, currently chief operating officer at Associated British Foods’ (ABF.L) Primark business, will start in March next year.
Founded in Manchester, northern England, in 2006, Boohoo has expanded rapidly, buying the PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal brands last year.