Bella Hadid was one of many women harassed while working for Victoria’s Secret

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If you have a New York Times subscription, I would absolutely suggest reading the Times’ epic piece about the fall of Victoria’s Secret – go here to read. Even if you don’t have a subscription, let the article be one of your NYT freebies for February. Last year, the VS runway show was canceled, VS’s sales have plummeted over the past five years. Brick-and-mortar VS stores have been closing at a steady clip. L Brand – the company that owns VS – has seen its stock nosedive. Internally, Victoria’s Secret has been a hotbed of toxicity, harassment and sexual assault for years, mostly because of the two men in charge of the VS brand: Ed Razek, one of the top executives at L Brand, and Leslie Wexner, the CEO of L Brands. Razek openly harassed and assaulted women working in and around VS, and Wexner ignored it all, even when there were repeated complaints for years. Here are just some of the horror stories:

Razek would sit in on castings (where models were often semi-nude): At castings, Mr. Razek sometimes asked models in their bras and underwear for their phone numbers, according to three people who witnessed his advances. He urged others to sit on his lap. Two models said he had asked them to have private dinners with him.

Model Andi Muise was fired after she refused Razek’s advances: In 2007, after two years of wearing the coveted angel wings in the Victoria’s Secret runway show, the 19-year-old was invited to dinner with Mr. Razek. She was excited to cultivate a professional relationship with one of the fashion industry’s most powerful men, she said. Mr. Razek picked her up in a chauffeured car. On the way to the restaurant, he tried to kiss her, she said. Ms. Muise rebuffed him; Mr. Razek persisted. For months, he sent her intimate emails, which The Times reviewed… Ms. Muise maintained a polite tone in her emails, trying to protect her career. When Mr. Razek asked her to come to his New York home for dinner, Ms. Muise said the prospect of dining alone with Mr. Razek made her uneasy; she skipped the dinner. She soon learned that for the first time in four years, Victoria’s Secret had not picked her for its 2008 fashion show.

The Jeffrey Epstein connection: The interviews with the models and employees add to a picture of Victoria’s Secret as a troubled organization, an image that was already coming into focus last year when Mr. Wexner’s ties to the sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein became public. Mr. Epstein, who managed Mr. Wexner’s multibillion-dollar fortune, lured some young women by posing as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models. On multiple occasions from 1995 through 2006, Mr. Epstein lied to aspiring models that he worked for Victoria’s Secret and could help them land gigs. He invited them for auditions, which at least twice ended with Mr. Epstein assaulting them, according to the women and court filings. Three L Brands executives said Mr. Wexner was alerted in the mid-1990s about Mr. Epstein’s attempts to recruit women. The executives said there was no sign that Mr. Wexner had acted on the complaints.

The Bella Hadid story: In 2018, at a fitting ahead of the fashion show, the supermodel Bella Hadid was being measured for underwear that would meet broadcast standards. Mr. Razek sat on a couch, watching. “Forget the panties,” he declared, according to three people who were there and a fourth who was told about it. The bigger question, he said, was whether the TV network would let Ms. Hadid walk “down the runway with those perfect titties.” (One witness remembered Mr. Razek using the word “breasts,” not “titties.”) At the same fitting, Mr. Razek placed his hand on another model’s underwear-clad crotch, three people said.

[From The New York Times]

The Epstein part of the story made me sick to my stomach. You know they were just girls, really – probably girls aged 15-18, trying to break into modeling, and those disgusting old men thought it was fine for Epstein to lure those poor girls using the promise of VS access. Ugh. And the harassment of a teenage model by Rezek, and all of the comments and harassment and sexual assault… my God, how did it even take so long for #MeToo to come to Victoria’s Secret? At least we’re there now, I guess.

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25 Responses to “Bella Hadid was one of many women harassed while working for Victoria’s Secret”

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  1. BANANIE says:

    This is absolutely disgusting, and I’m glad it’s coming to light. I know there were plenty of suspicions, but these details help paint a better picture. I wish modeling wasn’t so difficult to break into that these children – yes, children- feel that they have to put up with this kind of treatment so that they’ll get opportunities. Sure, the path of least resistance would be to pursue another career. But no career is entirely free of risk of harassment and/or assault. Even if the rates are lower, it’s messed up that someone would have to abandon their dream because of toxic culture.

  2. Ann says:

    Was it last year or the year before that one of their executives openly said VS has an unofficial “no fatties” policy that they were proud of? Whenever that happened was the moment I stopped shopping there. Now add in this disgusting news? I hope the company goes bankrupt and these gross pervs get locked up.

  3. jules says:

    So much grossness.

  4. Cee says:

    I’m glad my boob job made my VS bras redundant (due to change in size) and no longer wear them. I’d be setting them on fire.

  5. Christina says:

    I abandoned their underwear when I was fat-shamed in one of their Orange County stores in 2001. I was on a business trip and asked for XL bikini underwear in the store, and the young blond helping me insisted that someone my size should wear full briefs or high cut briefs. I find both very uncomfortable in general, and I had a 4 month old. I didn’t “snap back” and had never been thin. I wore and still wear a size 14. When I went back home to the Bay Area, the women had put in the underwear SHE thought I should wear. I was stunned.

    That experience, along with having larger breasts that required real bra straps, made me leave VS. The culture is set by the people at the top, and size-14 forty-plus year old women were driven away, and the kids who wanted to work for them and model the lingerie were fresh meat for a bunch of dirty old men. Sexism is everywhere, but they were literally exposed to these monsters.

    • ooshpick says:

      wow. thanks for sharing that story. that is truly unconscionable!

    • doofus says:

      yeah, I liked some of their underwear styles, but they so rarely carried the larger sizes, so I had to mix and match, buying a few of what I liked and a couple of ones that were MEH so I could get the 5 pairs for 5 dollars deal.

      and don’t even get me started on their lack of larger bra sizes. Whenever I told the sales ladies what size I needed as they were bending over the drawer, they’d stop dead and pop back up and say, “oh, I don’t know if we carry that size.” a freakin’ D or DD. not an F, not a K, not a GG. FFS, my size was NOT an “unusually large” one. D and DD are standard, or SHOULD be, in any lingerie store. I’d be like, “you do, but not that many” to which I’d get a dirty look.

      F THEM…I get better fitting and cheaper bras at Kohls.

    • AMA1977 says:

      It’s disgusting to think that these perverts just regarded other HUMAN BEINGS (and underage/very young ones at that!) as solely existing for their pleasure, to satisfy their urges. My husband and I have talked in-depth about #metoo and why it’s so hard to process as a woman…so many men in the world deny our very humanity and consider women to be fundamentally less-than. Not human. Decorative, or second-class, or unimportant as people. It’s heartbreaking. The first “round” of me too revelations was hard because it showed me that it was happening to all of us. I think it was easier for me to think that I’d just known some sh!tty @ssholes and been unlucky, but the dawning realization that it happens to virtually all women, and it’s perpetrated by a vast cross-section of men is just HORRIFYING.

      These new revelations are just…crushing. I have a daughter. I don’t ever want her to know this kind of pain or degradation. I don’t want her bright, shining eyes to be dimmed by stolen opportunities, harassment, and assault. I want her to be everything she’s capable of, and the idea that she may be denied that opportunity because of her gender fills me with anger and dread. That story is awful. These men are awful. Gah, I may cry.

  6. Allergy says:

    DISGUSTING CREEP.

  7. StormsMama says:

    Now imagine all the girls that didn’t have any standing or power AT ALL in the industry and NO WITNESSES to expose these stories.. and consider what these monsters did to them 🙁

    Oh and “grab em by the pussy” must be the code these billionaire abusers live by and I am so enraged 🤬 we have one as our president
    But not surprised bc we as a country are children with our heads in the sand refusing to face our fears, our ugly natures, and our murderous pasts.

  8. Regina says:

    I stopped patronizing all Wexner businesses as soon as the Epstein association came out.

  9. ana says:

    VS clothes are poor in quality and comfort, a true example of marketing and false image inflicted on young women. We as customers have the last say. Do not support companies that hurt women.

  10. adastraperaspera says:

    Lex Wexner bought Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion for him. It was used to traffic girls for decades. (And what brands were they using to traffic boys, I wonder?)

    “Epstein also obtained his Manhattan residence — a seven-story, 21,000-square-foot mansion that’s been called one of the city’s largest private homes — through Wexner, who purchased the property in 1989 for $13.2 million, furnished it lavishly, and yet “never spent more than two months there,” according to a 1996 interview Epstein gave to the New York Times.”
    ~Vox Story, July 2019
    https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/10/20689134/jeffrey-epstein-les-wexner-l-brands-victoria-secret-limited

    • MC2 says:

      I hope he’s eventually charged…..Epstein & Cosby were psycho creeps AND it was the people around them that fed young women and girls to them, like sending sheep to slaughter, that helped them victimize so many. I am hopeful that the metoo movement shines light on the complacent monsters that leech & profit off these guys & work to give them access to women. I hope the “modeling” agencies that fed Cosby his steady stream of women don’t sleep soundly, either.

    • anon says:

      “what brands were they using to traffic boys, I wonder?” Limited, I think. Last year The Daily Beast had an article by someone who’s friend ( a young men) was used to lure tourists into “working” for the brand, the kids were tempted by fake job offers and work visa that kept them under the corporation’s control. I’m not linking it because I don’t have the link saved anymore and also because this site has already blocked me twice for linking stuff, including stuff from their own archives (the moderator doesn’t like me).

  11. SM says:

    I think a broader question must be asked – why the age of models has to start around 14 and 15? Why girls bodies need to exploited in order to whore out different product. Do women over 18 do not need a bra or a skirt or a lipstick? The sole reason I like the trend largely Anna Wintour started is putting fashion together with celebrity, mainly actors and public figures, it allows to expand the age of people who serve at the pleasure of fashion/beauty industry. I think there should be a rule of not hiring underage girls and have proportions of different ages represented on the runway and beyond. In other case, it is unavoidable that young girls will be exploited in many different ways. The objectification of girls forcing them to look and act like women is beyond gross and yet this is how fashion industry operates.

    • lanne says:

      14 and 15 year old girls who are tall and thin are still rather gawky, and haven’t yet filled out by finishing puberty. Getting them early means that you can arrest their puberty through starvation, and they will stay skinny and boyish for as long as the girls can stand the lifestyle, which was often sustained through hectic lives at best (travelling from country to country for photo shoots and runway shows) or drugs at worse. When those girls flamed out, there was another crop of teenage girls right behind them. Also, teenaged girls are easier to exploit financially and sexually, because they’re so eager to please, and they know that thousands of other girls would willingly take their places. Thin, boyish bodies show off clothing most effectively. Girls are thought of as clothes hangers, except that hangers are probably treated with more consideration. The stories of these girls’ experiences are appalling.

      The Model Alliance, started by model Sara Ziff, has a models bill of rights that advocates things like: transparency in agency fees, on-time payments, safe work conditions, private changing areas, all requests for nudity be agreed to contractually in advance, and with an advocate on set for the models, access to food at fashion shows. In other words, a professional work environment. Even though magazines and fashion houses haven’t completely agreed to pass all of these rights, they are making improvements by not hiring models under age 16 (18 in some places), creating safe(r) working environments for photo shoots and runway shows. Improvements are happening, but they need to happen quicker. Calling out brands like VS (and boycotting said brands) is one way the consumer can help create a healthier, safer environment for models, and a more affirming fashion industry. Don’t buy V.S. Buy Fenty, Aerie, Thirdlove–brands that use actual women in their ads instead of girls. Consumers have to use the power of our wallets to make the changes that need to be made.

      • stormsmama says:

        such a thoughtful and informative comment! thank you!!

      • MC2 says:

        Thanks for the comment & including which brands to buy! I’m happy to hear there is a movement to create safer work conditions.
        I’m in dire need of new bras & will try Fenty, Aerie, & Thirdlove now.

      • Alyse says:

        Loved Sara Ziffs doco btw! Def worth a watch for anyone intrigued by the industry

  12. Wilmarama says:

    Yeah, shockingly surprising that a business built to portray women like skinny blow up dolls is full of misogyny… Never saw that coming.

  13. Lily says:

    Great prom pose

  14. Meg says:

    I’m just…..between the current administration and more stories like this coming out- I just feel exhausted and so disappointed. Naive really that I thought it wasn’t this bad