Store Spotlight: Unveiling Victoria's Secret

As an adolescent, I remember wishing Victoria’s Secret could keep the promise implicit in its name; the storefront would have done better to be shuttered off like Abercrombie where prying eyes could not see. Teenage embarrassment having ebbed, I now appreciate the iconography and fun of the store.

It’s funny I once thought that, considering Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by a man too embarrassed to shop for lingerie for his wife at a department store. Perhaps I was lucky not to be subject to an even greater embarrassment... Anyway, the idea of Victoria’s Secret was to create a comfortable, stylish environment that men (and women, of course) could shop in comfortably. 

Like their iconic pink bags, the Victoria’s Secret store is all pink and white. Far from saccharine, the color scheme is recognizably branded as well as appropriate for such girly fare. The Freehold Raceway Mall location is spacious, and you’re never bumping into things or people. You are drawn in by the colorful explosion of PINK products, as well as the latest fancy, frilly sets; walking through the store, you’ll find the less flashy, functional things stalwart in the back.

Instead of racks of bras sorted by size, like those passé department stores, Victoria’s Secret was initially distinguished by organizing its merchandise by style, as it stands today. Bras are displayed in an aesthetically pleasing way, framed on walls or modeled by bust forms on tables, with the stock sorted by size in drawers underneath or in the back room. This makes Victoria’s Secret, to my thinking, far easier to shop. One can zero in the desired style, easily locate their size, and quickly choose different colors or patterns of their old favorites. 

For those who aren’t yet jaded by the whole process, the VS staff has always been very helpful. Clad all in black, any associate can size you – and should. Everyone remembers that Oprah episode from years ago where she announced that something like 80 percent of women are wearing the wrong bra size, and even if you’re in the 20 percent, it bears warning that Victoria’s Secret products run quite small. 

But these days, it isn’t just all lingerie for the beleaguered husband’s wife. Now, Victoria’s Secret also features loungewear, beauty products (some inside the primary store, and more across the hall in Victoria’s Secret Beauty), and most notably the PINK line. You probably recognize this line as the one responsible for all the cropped sweatpants with “PINK” across the butt you’ve seen wandering around the mall and everywhere else. Whatever claims can be made about that line, those sweatpants are undeniably cozy. The rest of that line is more of the same: colorful, youthful sweats, pajamas, and the like.  So you see, Victoria’s Secret today is for all women at all ages.

Far from the discretion that humiliated husbands and embarrassed adolescents may desire, Victoria’s Secret today is a bold, proud exclamation point on women’s lingerie. For those confident enough to enter, that classic little pink bag is your badge of honor.