So, picture this: it’s 1977. A man walks into a department store to buy his wife a bra. He’s mortified. The lighting is florescent, the saleslady is bored, and the lingerie looks like surgical bandages. He thinks, “Why can’t this feel like a European boudoir?” That man? He wasn’t just a frustrated husband. He was Roy Raymond, the founder of Victoria’s Secret.
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Roy Raymond was a Stanford MBA grad, not a fashion designer. He had a real job in the 70s, and like you or me, he just got annoyed by bad shopping experiences. (Ever tried to buy a gift for someone and felt totally lost? Yeah, him too.) He wanted a store where a man could feel comfortable—and a woman could feel like a goddess. So he borrowed $40,000 from his parents and another $40,000 from a bank. That’s $80,000 of pure, risky hope.
He opened the first Victoria’s Secret in Palo Alto, California. Not in a fancy mall—just a small, dark, wood-paneled shop. It was decorated like a Victorian parlor, with velvet and mirrors. He named it after Queen Victoria, because to him, "Victorian" meant elegance and secrecy. The "Secret" part? Well, that was the naughty, intimate stuff inside.
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Here’s the kicker, and I’m not lying: Roy Raymond was a genius at creating a vibe, but a terrible businessman. Within five years, the store was wildly popular—$6 million in annual sales. But he ran out of money. He couldn’t scale it. He was drowning in inventory and bad loans. (You know that feeling when your passion project becomes a monster you can’t feed? He lived it.)
So, in 1982, he sold the entire company to a guy named Leslie Wexner for $4 million. Wexner was the founder of The Limited, a clothing empire. He was the polar opposite of Raymond: cold, corporate, and brutally efficient. Roy Raymond walked away with a check, thinking he had won. Spoiler alert: he hadn’t.
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Wexner didn't change the name. He just blew it up. He took Raymond’s cozy little Victorian fantasy and turned it into a global pink-and-black machine. He added the catalog, then the runway shows, then the Angels. The thing you know as Victoria’s Secret today? That’s Wexner’s creature. Raymond was the father who died before the baby grew up.
And here’s the saddest part, and I’m not being dramatic: Roy Raymond never saw the supermodel empire. After selling the company, he tried other ventures—a children’s bookstore, a high-end toy store. They flopped. He lost his marriage, his confidence, and his money. In 1993, sixteen years after his "aha" moment in that department store, he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was 47 years old. (Let that sit for a second.)
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The Uncomfortable Truth
So, when someone asks, “Who founded Victoria’s Secret?” the answer is a split personality. Roy Raymond created the idea. He wanted a place where a nervous guy could buy lingerie without blushing. Leslie Wexner built the business. He made it a billion-dollar juggernaut. Raymond was the artist; Wexner was the architect.
But we don’t tell the story of the artist often enough, do we? We just think of the wings and the lip gloss. If you ever walk past a Victoria’s Secret store and see those pink stripes, remember: that whole circus started because one man was too embarrassed to buy his wife a bra in a fluorescent light. Roy Raymond gave us the fantasy. Wexner gave us the machine. And I’d argue the fantasy was the harder part.
Funny how the world works. The person who saw the problem didn’t get to enjoy the solution. But hey—next time you see a “Pink” hoodie, you can gently whisper, “Thank you, Roy.” Just don’t do it out loud in the store. People will think you’re weird. And you know what? Roy would have approved of that kind of awkwardness.
