Inside Victoria’s Secret’s $6 Billion Business Turnaround

There was a stretch of time in recent history when Victoria’s Secret was deeply unloved by consumers and investors alike.

Scarlett Frazer, a 26-year-old fashion influencer who spends thousands at the store annually, is among the diehards who say they never gave up on VS amid its slog in the 2010s. But even she acknowledges the rough patch.

Caught in the cultural shifts of that decade that made the brand seem out of touch and its marketing in bad taste, and beset by competition, the business struggled.

Fast-forward to the present, and the baby pink stripes are back. Victoria’s Secret, once known for selling lingerie with unabashed sex appeal, is in the midst of a major comeback, with sales roaring and its stock climbing to records after a yearslong downturn.

The turnaround can be chalked up to a series of strategic decisions that revived the company’s status as one of America’s supreme intimates retailers — as well as a broader nostalgia for the 90s that has jolted all sorts of brick-and-mortar retailers back to life, from Abercrombie & Fitch to Best Buy.

For Victoria’s Secret, the key has been a reinvigorated brand that appeals to a younger crowd, as well as old fans sentimental for Victoria’s Secret’s 90s-era heyday, analysts told Business Insider.

Victoria’s Secret is on track for its best-ever year as a stand-alone publicly traded company. The stock is up 69% year-to-date, marking its best yearly performance since the company was spun off from L Brands, now known as Bath & Body Works, in 2021.

The company’s market cap is up $6 billion since October 2023, when its stock plunged to an all-time low of $13 a share.

The gains have been fueled by surging sales. Comparable sales, a measure that excludes distortions stemming from newly opened or closed stores, have risen steadily since 2025.

Prior to that, comparable sales had been falling consistently on a year-over-year basis, Mauricio Serna, an executive director at UBS, said.

Serna said Victoria’s Secret’s business inflection began as the company embarked on a new strategy laid out by CEO Hillary Super. He pointed to the firm’s “victory lap” on bras in particular, with brassiere sales seeing mid-teens growth in the second quarter. The bra business also remains Victoria’s Secret’s “#1 growth driver,” the company said in its quarterly investor presentation.

“This is a company that has struggled for several years now,” Serna told Business Insider. “The turnaround is materializing.”

The comeback is also partly psychological. Last weekend’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show drew a peak concurrent livestream audience of 3.64 million, up 33% from last year’s levels, according to the livestream analytics firm Streams Charts.

“The brand has become sexy and fun and aspirational again, but in a way that feels relevant to today’s consumer,” Hannah Renger, an analyst who covers Victoria’s Secret at Citrini Research, said.

Frazer said the retailer is re-entering mainstream popularity. She began to notice the shift herself in 2023, when she began uploading tutorials on how to create the iconic Victoria’s Secret Angel look that went “insanely viral” on YouTube and TikTok.

“I honestly think Victoria’s Secret is in a league of its own,” she said.

‘Supercharging bras’

For investors, the proof is in the stock price. Shares had mostly slid since its 2021 spinoff, but its fortunes began to reverse in late 2024, around the time Hillary Super, the former chief of Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie line, was brought in as CEO.

The upward trajectory for the stock started in the spring of 2025, when designer Adam Selman, another Savage X Fenty alum, was brought in as the firm’s chief creative officer.

Serna said several issues plagued Victoria’s Secret in the 2010s:

Limited product offerings. Prior to Super’s appointment, Victoria’s Secret rarely had new product launches, Serna said.Heavy discounting. In the last decade, sweeping promotional deals appeared to be Victoria’s Secret’s main strategy for competing with other retailers, Serna said. The discounts ultimately hurt profit margins and drew lower-quality growth, he added.

Brand perception issues. Victoria’s Secret became associated with an “exclusive” standard of beauty at a time when culture began to value inclusiveness. The brand was slower than others to adjust, Serna said.

The company also came under scrutiny for its treatment of women and its association with Les Wexner, the former CEO. Wexner, who enlisted Jeffrey Epstein as his personal financial advisor for decades, stepped down from his CEO role in 2020 and later left the board in 2021.

Super, whose role at Savage X Fenty included establishing a major partnership with Nordstrom, has made innovation one of her top priorities since taking the helm in 2024. Since she joined, VS has had a regular pipeline of new product releases, particularly in the bra department, an area management has said they’re looking to dominate.

“One of the very first things that Hillary communicated was the opportunity to take what they call ‘supercharging bras,’ one of their core strategies for the turnaround and enhance the product offering on that front,” Serna said.

Selman, the chief creative officer at VS&Co, has also played an integral role in the firm’s reinvention. The fashion and costume designer, who made Rihanna’s famous see-through “naked dress” in 2014, appears to have married the brand to a more innovative, fashion-forward aesthetic, Citrini’s Renger said.

Selman also played a role in revitalizing Victoria’s Secret bra department, having learned “the bra part of the business” while running his own sportswear line.

The strategy paid off. 2026 marked the first time the bra business has grown in the last four years, with bra sales accounting for around half of the company’s sales growth last quarter, Super said in a call with investors.

“Hillary Super is a fantastic CEO, and one of the most important things that she’s done is recognize what actually works for Victoria’s Secret,” Renger said, pointing to the brand’s return to “aspirational sexiness.”

Super has also played a critical role in refining Victoria’s Secret’s image and landing a more consistent marketing message, Serna said. At times, she’s appeared to both lean into the brand’s sex appeal — even changing the company’s stock ticker from VSCO to VSXY this year — while widening the definition of sexy and shifting the company away from the supermodel aesthetic that dominated in the 90s.

The strategy has walked a fine line between reinvention and a return to the familiar.

Serna pointed to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which was revived from a yearslong hiatus after Super started in 2024. This year’s event, however, showcased both legacy Angels, such as Adriana Lima, as well as new influencers, lending to a more diverse lineup.

The annual feather-filled fashion show has drawn newer Gen Z shoppers as well as older people who may have been shopping at Victoria’s Secret 30 years ago, Renger said.

End of the runway?

It’s unclear how much further Victoria’s Secret’s turnaround has to run.

The recovery appears to be largely priced in from a valuation standpoint, Serna said. He also outlined potential risks, such as the possibility that the brand reverts to its aggressively promotional stance, or that other players begin competing more aggressively in the US bra market.

Other popular retailers from the 90s and 2000s that have made a comeback have stagnated recently as US shoppers feel the pinch of higher prices. Retail sales slowed in September, rising 0.8% for the month, per the Commerce Department. Gap, which made a high-profile comeback in recent years, is down 11% year-to-date.

“We think maybe there’s not that much upside to the stock price at this point,” Serna said, speculating that the company may see more subdued growth going forward. UBS downgraded Victoria’s Secret stock following its springtime surge.

Others are hopeful the hype will endure. In a note, Bank of America said Victoria’s Secret was likely experiencing a “Fashion show halo” that is expected to boost sales through the holidays.

Frazer, the decadeslong Victoria’s Secret customer, says the appetite for VS Angel content is still roaring on her channel.

“It’s an entire aesthetic, lifestyle and almost a little club that girls want to be part of. You’re not just buying a perfume or a pair of pajamas, you’re buying into that whole world,” she said.

Victoria’s Secret executives declined an interview request from Business Insider.