Jude Hammerle
Brands that take themselves very seriously appeal to consumers operating in the Strong zone. The Strong consumer competes by intimidation, and surrounds himself/herself with highly aggressive brand statements that glare out at the world. The Victoria’s Secret catalog is a curious case in point, a very serious division of an otherwise fun brand.
The Victoria’s Secret catalog is a direct descendent of the infamous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, that annual feast for the roving eye that depicts peak supermodels lounging about in their unmentionables. The poses that SISI’s and Victoria’s celebrity bodies strike from issue to issue are identical, and are strictly prescribed by history and convention. They trace their origins back through the predecessor of the Swimsuit Issue, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, to the colorful illustrated pinups of Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez, commonly known as Alberto Vargas. His idealized cartoon images of nude and barely clad women first appeared in the pages of Esquire in the thirties, then earned fame as government-issue nose art on American World War II bombers. These pictures reminded the boys what they were fighting for, and also burned Vargas’ idealist iconography into the minds of millions of men and women across the globe. (See Fig. A, below.)
There is no precedent to the work of Vargas. The first permanent photograph of any kind was created in 1826, and the first wave of pornography that followed it–while sometimes shockingly frank–was disarmingly human. During the hundred years that elapsed between the 1820s and the 1920s, the female subjects of pornography conformed to no rule or convention. They smiled or didn’t, were beautiful or not, carried too much weight or not enough, wore something or nothing, were sweet or salacious or sometimes even silly, and most importantly, seemed to be in on the joke.[1] The mere fact that women were photographed with the intention of titillation seemed sufficient to provoke and sustain the interest of male consumers. Like it or not, there is an unmistakable innocence to early pornography. (See Fig. B, below.)
That innocence withdrew rapidly under the influence of Vargas. Beginning as an artist for the racy Ziegfeld Follies in 1920s New York, then continuing as a studio art director in 1930s Hollywood, Vargas commandeered natural sexual fun and drove it down a dark and dangerous alley. The chillingly lean Art Deco nudes shot by Ziegfeld photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston beginning around 1920 mark the first appearance of the Vargas poses, and from that moment they absolutely define the modern commercial identity of the sexual female: her smile disappears, she glares at or ignores us, her body and beauty are idealized to a state of untouchable perfection, and her innocent “Yes?” becomes a provocative “No.” (See Fig. C, below.) By 1930, the male viewer of feminine forms is no longer an innocent bystander; he’s been challenged, and now must choose to dominate or submit to every flash of female power he sees. It is especially disturbing that this change occurs almost simultaneously with the ratification of voting rights for American women on August 26, 1920.
From the standpoint of strategy, the Victoria’s Secret catalog expertly engages the Strong identity in men and women by its abject seriousness. While it is commendable that Victoria’s has the insight and inclination to spread its appeal from the Fun and Affluent zones into Strong, the tactical choice to use objective exploitation as the face of its Strong deployment creates an opportunity for rivals. Even if its only motivation is to maintain control of its category, Victoria’s catalog must make itself a champion of its consumers–a shelter from the storm of oppressive images that swirls about them–even if they’ve been conditioned to love it. For no matter how successful the catalog may be in its present form ($1.5 billion including web sales in 2008), Victoria’s goal must be to be right in all cases, and right now its catalog is seriously wrong.
We will come back to the story of Victoria’s Secret in the next chapter to celebrate the brilliance of its very Fun stores ($4 billion in 2008).
This is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Real Reasons We Buy (a work in process).
Figure A:
A classic Alberto Vargas cartoon.
Figure B:
A French Postcard, circa 1900
Figure C:
Ziegfield Girl Hazel Forbes, by Alfred Cheney Johnston, circa 1920
[1] Alexandre Dupouy has superbly chronicled the late first phase in three definitive collections: Yva Richard: L’âge d’or du fétischisme, Collection privée de Monsieur X, and L’album obscène, (Editions Asarte, Paris, 1994, 2000, 2002)
Posted by Jude 
