• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, August 6, 2019

Edward Razek, the longtime head of marketing at Victoria’s Secret and a member of the L Brands team since 1983, is retiring.

“Responsible for a homogenous, airbrushed and sexualized brand image that is now largely seen as outdated, Razek provoked  the most public ire with comments he made in a Vogue.com  interview last November defending Victoria's Secret's casting practices, saying, among other things: ‘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,’’’ Dhani Mau writes  for Fashionista.

“Despite all the outrage the comments received from the public, Razek remained in his powerful position until now. (However, Jan Singer, the brand’s female CEO at the time, left shortly after the Vogue interview),” Mau adds.

Victoria’s Secret recently hired its first transgender model, Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio, SF Gate reports, featuring photos of her from a shoot for its VS Pink athletic line that were posted on Instagram.

“I’ve loved coming to work here, every single day, for many, many years. But all good things must and do, inevitably come to an end,” Razek wrote in a memo to L Brands partners that was shared with employees by CEO Les Wexner and passed on  to the media. 

“The departure also comes as L Brands rushes to distance itself from the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested last month and charged with sex trafficking involving girls as young as 14. For many years, Mr. Epstein was a close personal adviser to Mr. Wexner,” Tiffany Hsu and Emily Steel write for The New York Times.

“The Times reported last month that L Brands executives in the mid-1990s had learned that Mr. Epstein was trying to pitch himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models. They said Mr. Wexner was warned. Around the same time, a model said, Mr. Epstein lured her to his hotel room under the pretense of being a Victoria’s Secret talent scout and then attacked her. L Brands has said it hired outside lawyers ‘to conduct a thorough review’ into the relationship between Mr. Wexner and Mr. Epstein,” Hsu and Steel continue.

Model Shanina Shaik revealed  recently that the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show show would not take place this year as organizers attempt “to work on branding and new ways to do the show,” according to  a report in Harper’s Bazaar. 

“The 2018 Victoria's Secret show was watched by fewer people than ever before when it aired on Sunday, 2 December. The catwalk event, which starred the Hadid sisters, as well as Kendall Jenner, attracted a record low of only 3.3 million viewers, compared to five million in 2017,” it adds.

Last week, Bloomberg took a long look  at Victoria’s Secret’s problems beyond L Brands CEO Leslie Wexner’s financial relationship with Epstein. A subhed read: “In the age of #MeToo and body positivity, the brand is increasingly out of step with today’s consumer.” 

Bloomberg’s Kim Bhasin, Jordyn Holman, Sophie Alexander and Anders Melin describe how “the 71-year-old marketing chief and his team decide which models are worthy of walking the Victoria’s Secret runway in angel wings and lingerie. GQ and Forbes have called him one of the most important people in the modeling industry.

“Razek takes his role as keeper of the sexy angel mystique seriously, people in the industry and former employees say. … Between tapings of the 2011 fashion show, for instance, the Victoria’s Secret angels would crowd around Razek as if he were a coach giving a locker room pep talk before the big game.”

It then transcribes a recording of Razek speaking to dozens of modals backstage.

“In the history of the world, as of this show, only 165 women have ever been in this show. There have only been 140 pairs of wings in the entire history of this show. That means each of you, every one of you, because there are 7 billion people on the planet. Each of you is one in 45 million human beings. Let’s start with that.”

Let’s end with  Mallory Creveling’s “50 Body Positive Influencers You Should Follow” for Verywell Mind. Its message is: “Meet the women and men who celebrate self-love in all shapes, sizes, skin colors, body types, and beyond.”