Inside the Changing Room
For the sake of earnest conversation, let’s temporarily dismiss the taboo of publicly discussing undergarments.
Going bra shopping for the first time is essentially the secular equivalent of a bat mitzvah for adolescent girls. Aside from the absence of deeply entrenched religious tradition, both mark a young girl’s transition into womanhood often surrounded by friends or family. Though both experiences may share a similar excess of brightly colored sparkles, bat mitzvahs are held in synagogues and first-time bra shopping almost exclusively at Victoria’s Secret. Due to the United States’ anti-trust laws and our heightened consumer culture, most of us typically expect a plethora of options when we shop. However, undergarments seem to be an exception to this rule.
Victoria’s Secret has eclipsed the lingerie market in the United States. In fact, I doubt many people could conceivably name any other undergarment retailers. From the seductive lace scattered across the store and the photos of lingerie-clad models plastering the walls to its annual fashion show, Victoria’s Secret has gone great lengths to differentiate itself.
After digging into Victoria’s Secret a bit more, I came across its founding mission, to “make a store in which men could feel comfortable buying lingerie.” I must say, the company’s marketing team has done an incredible job reaching men, with the airbrushed photos of models adorning store walls and the annual fashion show of nearly-naked supermodels.
In an interview with Vogue last fall, Victoria’s Secret CMO Ed Razek said that they wouldn’t have transgender or plus-size models in their fashion show because the show is meant to be a fantasy, and no one would want to see transgender or plus-size models in their fantasies.
How is it that Victoria’s Secret drives a multibillion-dollar business selling a product aimed to support women’s breasts by making them feel anything but supported? There is a time and a place for everything, but getting bombarded with sexualized photos of women in lingerie while trying to find a day-to-day bra and pair of underwear simply isn’t it. The reality is that most girls don’t look like the drawn-up fantasy of Photoshopped models. So why give them one more reason to feel inadequate in moments as private and personal as lingerie shopping?
Fortunately, I’m not the only one who found this discovery rather unsettling. In 2013, Duke grad Heidi Zak and her husband David Spector started a company in the Silicon Valley called ThirdLove. At the time, Heidi was working for Google as a senior marketing manager and David was a partner at Sequoia Capital. Simply put, neither of them had a monetary incentive to leave. And yet, they left because they saw an opening in the undergarment market for bras designed for women, not men.
Since its conception, Heidi has grown ThirdLove into a $750 million company. ThirdLove now offers 78 different bra sizes aimed to cater to all different shapes and sizes of women – not just those in Victoria’s Secret’s fantasy.
In his Harvard Business Review article, The Discipline of Innovation, Peter Drucker exclaims, “The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, ‘This is obvious! Why didn’t I think of it? It’s so simple!’” ThirdLove is simply trying to sell bras to women by marketing them for women. They want to provide women of all shapes and sizes a bra that is comfortable and actually fits like it should. It isn’t rocket science.
Though we do not need to be political in all of our purchasing decisions, progressive brands like ThirdLove give us the opportunity to stand up for what we believe in and not feed into the atavistic ideals that continue to drive the world of fashion. I think fashion as a whole is finally beginning to catch up to the rest of the world. The social revolutions that have rampaged throughout our cities and have united people for positive social change are finally seeping into the fashion industry. By supporting brands that support inclusivity, sustainability, and diversity you can singlehandedly have a say in the future of fashion, clothing, and retail. Don’t be a passive consumer. Shop wisely.
By Isabel Friedman
Duke student, not much of a cheeky tagline person.