Is the Victoria’s Secret Angels rebrand too little, too late?

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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women in finance are held back by ‘mediocre men’ in middle management, building a diverse board proves easier than one company thought, and Victoria’s Secret ditches the Angels. The Broadsheet will be off on Friday for Juneteenth—have a great weekend.

– Fallen Angels. What do you think of when you think Victoria’s Secret?

For anyone who’s followed the brand (or even just visited a mall or been spammed by its catalogues) the first images that come to mind are likely to be giant, “sexy” padded bras, boudoir photo shoots, and of course, the Victoria’s Secret Angels—the Barbie-eque models hired by the company to embody the ideal VS woman.

Now, the New York Times reports that the Angels are no more—and that Victoria’s Secret is undergoing a massive rebranding that includes replacing them with the “VS Collective,” a group of women that includes “Megan Rapinoe, the 35-year-old pink-haired soccer star and gender equity campaigner; Eileen Gu, a 17-year-old Chinese American freestyle skier and soon-to-be Olympian; the 29-year-old biracial model and inclusivity advocate Paloma Elsesser, who was the rare size 14 woman on the cover of Vogue; and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, a 38-year-old Indian actor and tech investor.”

Wow. This is a huge pivot for Victoria’s Secret and one that’s been a very, very long time coming. Not only has the oozing, hyper (hetero-) sexual energy of the Angels—custom-made for the male gaze—felt wildly out-of-date for at least a decade now, but leadership of the brand has been a mess. In 2019, the Times revealed the close ties between longtime CEO Les Wexner and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and reported that under Wexner and his deputies, the company was awash in accusations of misogyny and harassment.

So, led by a new team, which includes CMO Martha Pease, Victoria’s Secret is hoping to leave that legacy behind. The big question: will it work?

I must say, I’m skeptical. To begin with, the company clung to its old ways for so long that it allowed a huge crop of more modern, inclusive underwear brands to spring up and gain traction. VS remains the titan in the space, but the competition is getting fiercer by the day. But the real challenge isn’t external. Victoria’s Secret spent so many years building its empire of padded, cinched, and airbrushed femininity—and pushing that ideal and the values it represents into our mailboxes and malls—that it’s going to take more than a change of branding to tear it down. The women of the VS Collective are an impressive bunch, but will their presence be enough to convince shoppers that VS has changed its DNA? As Erin Schmidt of Coresight Research told the NYT: “To rebrand is going to take a lot of steps to ensure that they have the consumer trust, that this isn’t just inclusivity-washing.”

Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee

The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.

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