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On a runway at September’s New York Fashion Week, Victoria’s Secret will take another step toward its every-woman transformation with the debut of a line of adaptive intimates — bras and panties designed for women with physical or sensory disabilities.
The garments address disabilities ranging from arthritis or cerebral palsy to autism, and will be part of the company’s existing branded lines Body by Victoria and Pink. They will be sold online and in about 40 stores starting in October. Notably, at a glance, they don’t look any different than typical lingerie, and they’ll come in a variety of pretty colours and patterns. There is nothing medical-looking about them.
The collection will be shown as part of the non-profit Runway of Dreams’s runway show — not Victoria’s Secret’s own fashion show, set to return this autumn after a four-year hiatus. Victoria’s Secret partnered with the organisation, which helps give people with disabilities more visibility in fashion, to develop the collection and cast the show. The runway models debuting the collection won’t be the unattainable beauty queens in feather wings for which the Victoria’s Secret brand was long known — they will be people with disabilities.
Introducing adaptive lingerie may help Victoria’s Secret’s strategy to rebrand itself to appeal to the broad diversity of women. That’s been key to the company’s focus since it spun off from scandal-plagued L Brands and in July 2021 began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock has fallen precipitously since then, closing yesterday at $19.30, less than half its initial price.
Executives at the company argue that adaptive lingerie is also a potentially savvy move, given that estimates suggest the industry will be worth $400 million by 2026, up from $278.9 billion in 2017.
“From a market perspective, there’s a lot of people (with disabilities) out there. That’s a lot of buying power,” says Lydia Smith, Victoria’s Secret’s chief diversity officer. She declined to share the company’s sales projections, noting, “This will be our first pass at it. This is a small piece of our larger business.”
The company worked with Gamut Management, a consulting firm formed to work with companies to create products for people with disabilities. Its founder, Mindy Scheier, helped Tommy Hilfiger design its now well-established adaptive line of clothing.
Scheier, who is also the founder of Runway of Dreams, connected with Victoria’s Secret by inviting its executives to a fashion show last year and explaining that women with disabilities “care as much about feeling sexy as any typical woman”, Scheier says.
Gamut connected Victoria’s Secret executives and designers with a dozen women with an array of disabilities as well as ethnicities and age. “Not only did Victoria’s Secret need to understand the needs of this woman,” Scheier says. “They needed to understand this consumer at large.”
One of the most common disabilities, she says, is people with arthritis. Many older women have trouble reaching their back to then connect the tiny hook-and-eye closures of bras. There are people with limb differences: a missing arm requires dressing with one arm, or asking for help. Wheelchair users can be helped by additional openings in pants and panties. Neuromuscular diseases and cognitive differences can make working the traditional bra’s closures impossible.
“My big ‘aha’ moment was sitting on a call and in the focus group was a man who had cerebral palsy so he had dexterity issues,” Smith says. “He talked about being able to take off his wife’s bra, which is something he hadn’t been able to do. That opened my mind that the couple was missing a certain level of intimacy.”
Victoria’s Secret designers, working with the testers found by Gamut, at first struggled to find solutions that would work for every possible disability, Victoria’s Secret’s Smith and Gamut’s Scheier both say. They had to accept that isn’t possible, and that it’s enough to create products for many people.
The solutions they settled on use magnets as closures — a design used by other adaptive fashion brands including Magnaready, Liberare and Slick Chicks. The two bra designs close at the front with magnets. Panties also use magnets, with two side closures that don’t require a wearer to step through leg holes.
Scheier concedes that she could have taken the idea to another lingerie company, but notes that Victoria’s Secret has for so long defined sexy intimate apparel that wearing the brand has been a dream for many women with disabilities, despite its history of misogyny and bullying.
“Regardless of the stigma of the Angel shows, women with disabilities want to be able to wear Victoria’s Secret and Pink,” Scheier says. “This actually was a hugely emotional journey for the women [who tested the designs for the brand].”
Victoria’s Secret has now shed many of the executives and board members tied to its past. Smith notes that 88 per cent of its board of directors now are women, and half are people of colour. “We’re listening,” she says of the company’s new approach. “I think that’s the number one thing we have to make sure that we continue to listen to our customers, listen to our associates. We have a leadership team who s open to do that.”
Gamut’s Scheier argues that adaptive apparel should be a full category like maternity and large sizes. She tells the story of a teacher in a wheelchair who asked for the school’s ramp to be cleared of snow before the stairs. “If you shovel the ramp first, everyone can go into school,” the teacher said.
And, in fact, Scheier suggests that the market for front-opening magnetic-closure bras may be bigger even than Victoria’s Secret imagines. “I feel very comfortable saying that a magnetic front bra is going to be very popular with all women,” she says.
Previous “Runway of Dreams: A Fashion Revolution” runway shows
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