This is an excellent business history of Victoria's Secret's rise and fall by an impartial reporter whose diligent research and sourcing shows up on every page. The book would have been better if Victoria's Secret former or current executive team had agreed to provide their side of the story, but the fact that they couldn't untwist their knickers long enough to help out probably freed the author to pull no punches -- the bits about convicted sexual offender and serial child predator Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship to Victoria Secret's billionaire owner, as well as the reporting about Victoria's Secret's culture of misogyny were especially eye opening.

In short, Sherman's gimlet eye delivers a well-deserved wedgie that splits Victoria's Secret right down the middle, unveiling and exposing its angelic and demonic hemispheres, blemishes and all.

Ready for a deep dive into the ride and fall of Victoria's Secret while also learning about everything that goes into clothing retail? Selling Sexy is just the ticket. Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez have weaved a compelling narrative following Victoria's Secret as it morphed from a high end lingerie boutique, to thriving catalog business, to ubiquitous mall-bound stores, and its current state.

To learn about how Victoria's Secret came to be is also to learn about how Les Wexner became a billionaire and pioneer in fast fashion. Coming into this book, I had never been familiar with any of the folks who built Victoria's Secret, but Wexner was one who I was particularly surprised had never crossed into my consciousness. I had no idea about the genesis of The Limited, his first company, or Bath and Body Works and all of the sub-brands that came before Wexner bought VS. The fact that Wexner is at least partially credited with pushing forward the concept of a mall in general and that Ohio was a hub for all of this was eye opening to me. Of course, with the eye opening revelations around just how influential Wexner was, I was equally disgusted by the rampant sexism and assault that was pervasive in the company. The level to which Wexner was intertwined with Epstein was despicable.

The book goes through the full history of VS, but as a millenial, I was particularly keyed into to the storylines beginning in the late 90's and early 00's. The Pink era was a big one for VS and formative for me, too, I remember desperately wanting those sweatpants to be able to feel like I fit in in high school. The morph of VS again to focus toward athleisure, and then the subsequent failings when...an 80 year old man re-takes the company and abandons what made him innovative.

I listened to the audio version of this and Allyson Ryan did a fantastic job of guiding me through Victoria's Secret storied past I would absolutely recommend the medium.

The only item I found challenging within the book is how the authors would flip back and forth between different years to help the narrative, it made it difficult to follow at times how different events were connected or where we were with the different executives and their place in the company.

On the whole though, I absolutely recommend the book. Thank you very much to NetGalley and MacMillan audio for the advanced copy.

This is a nice addition to the genre of retrospectives looking back at the cultural treatment of women through the late 20th century. It sometimes veers towards being dry in its comprehensive research, but never steps over the line.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Publishing for the advanced audiobook.

The beginning of this was kind of slow, but once it picked up there were a lot of very interesting facts and "Did you know's" about how retail works and the appeal of a place like Victoria's Secret

Sometimes all you want is a push-up bra with lace trim and a bow in the middle wrapped up with tissue in a pink striped bag. Affordable, dependable, easily accessible–brought to you by your neighborhood mall. Lingerie is a gift you give yourself, and for the gold standard you need look no further than Victoria’s Secret–elegant, glamorous, feminine, and, of course, sexy.

People who know the story of Victoria’s Secret think of the men: retail empire builder Les Wexner, Hugh Hefner wannabe Ed Razek, or criminal predator/brand tarnisher Jeffrey Epstein. But Victoria started with the billion-dollar brain-child of a woman Gaye Raymond, the vessel for Victoria’s story and co-founder of the business with her husband Roy in 1977.

Gaye was first in a genealogy of women whose tireless labor constructed the entrepreneurial empire. Cynthia Fedus-Fields, the Victoria’s Secret catalog expert, Laura Berkman, the marketer from the Limited, and Sarah Gallagher, a lingerie buyer from Lord & Taylor, formed a feminine triumvirate, a powerful paragon of empowered women with ambition and autonomy.

These generations of women, individually impressive and remarkable in her own right, established and evolved their vision with one question: “What is sexy now?” They wanted to empower women to understand that sexy was more than a performance for their partners, it was defined and embodied–quite literally–by themselves. They created a company that would afford women the opportunity to express their individuality and their sexuality through the most fundamental clothing in their closets and transform the mundane into lingerie. In Selling Sexy, they forged a multibillion dollar industry that defined a generation.

This book started off so strong and then just went into the gutter. It started with going after the old CEO and scandals, how VS ruined Millennials relationship with body image and mental health, then goes off into hours of history of bras, the history of the founder, catalogs, models, and things that did nothing contribute to what drew the reader in. The author had a huge opportunity here and chose to bore the reader.

After having read this book on Kindle, I was ecstatic to be able to review its audiobook as well.

I gave the print version 3.5/5, rounded up to 4/5. Unfortunately, the downfall of the print version (IMO) was an even greater problem for the audiobook. I found myself getting lost in - if not totally spacing out during - the information when it was largely around numbers (years, percentages, dollar amounts, etc). This could just be a "me thing" though, who knows. Either way, the audiobook is a 3/5 for me.

I do want to give Lauren Sherman credit for how much time and effort must have gone into this book. I feel like I could give a presentation recapping VS history right this second and no one would know I didn't work there.

Such an all-encompassing narrative backfired about 65% into the book though, when I couldn't tell if I was in history class or reading a book. At first, I thought "Eh, that's on me for not knowing what I was getting myself into"... But many readers won't know what they're getting themselves into either, so here I am, with a fair warning.

I still do recommend this book, with the caveat that you may also find that the print version is easier to digest than the audiobook (which again isn't saying a whole lot). There was so much back and forth around VS in the media, and this book cleared all of that up. Just be ready for a VERY dense retelling.

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Lauren Sherman, and publisher for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I ended up quitting this book about 30% in when I realized this was much more of a history of a clothing story than a deep dive into the 'rise and fall' of a brand with problematic connections. In that 30% I learned more about the history of clothing and mass production than I ever needed to know. I wasn't surprised that even in the 4 and 5 star reviews that people were saying this was dry, because this book gave me the literary version of cottonmouth.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.