By TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was filmed earlier this week, but on social media, the bigger V.S.-related news was the continued fallout regarding comments made by an executive at the lingerie brand. In the lead-up to the taping, Victoria’s Secret’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president of public relations sat down with Vogue to chat—a conversation that went somewhat off the rails.
Chief marketing officer Ed Razek criticized press coverage of Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty runway show, arguing that if Victoria’s Secret sent a heavily pregnant model down the runway (a reference to Slick Woods’s appearance at the Fenty show), they would be accused of pandering. Razek and Monica Mitro, the brand’s head of P.R., were asked about the inclusion of transgender and plus-size models in the fashion space. Razek’s answer was not good.
“If you’re asking if we’ve considered putting a transgender model in the show or looked at putting a plus-size model in the show, we have,” Razek said. Later in the interview, however, Razek seemed to double down. “So it’s like, why don’t you do 50? Why don’t you do 60? Why don’t you do 24?” Razek said, referring to how other brands have expanded beyond Victoria’s Secret’s size range (30A to 40DDD). “It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special. That’s what it is. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and any other fashion brand in the world would take it in a minute, including the competitors that are carping at us. And they carp at us because we’re the leader.”
All of Razek’s statements earned him a heap of criticism on social-media, where consumers and critics took his position to be dismissive of entire groups of potential consumers. The comments overshadowed the taping of the show itself, where models paraded down a runway while performers like Shawn Mendes performed today’s hits.
That Razek’s comments prompted such a firestorm is perhaps ironic, given one of his responses in the Vogue interview. “I’ve been off Instagram for a few months now—I just can’t take all the people trying to beat up on the models or all the people trying to tell me what an idiot I am this time of year,” Razek said. “The hate that’s on social media, it’s extraordinarily toxic.” Late Friday night, the lingerie company issued a walk-back from Razek.
The patch-up may prove too little, too late in a competitive market, with Savage x Fenty and other brands putting forth a new type of “fantasy”—one that goes beyond the yearly, $1 million fantasy bra for which Victoria’s Secret is famous.
Credit:Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
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