If you’ve seen the 2010 movie, “The Social Network,” you may recall a scene when Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) leans across the table to deliver a story to Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) — a cautionary tale about missed opportunity, bad timing, and how an idea alone is never enough.
As music thumps in the background, Parker tells the story of a guy named Roy Raymond. Roy founded Victoria’s Secret. Here’s his rant, almost word for word — and if you prefer, there’s a video clip of the scene, too:
A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie, but he’s too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea for a high-end place that doesn’t make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria’s Secret. Makes $500,000 his first year. He starts a catalog, opens three more stores, and after five years, he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and The Limited for $4 million. Happy ending, right? Except two years later, the company is worth $500 million, and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh-highs.
The point of the rant? That the real genius behind a once-in-a-lifetime idea isn’t the idea itself — it’s the ambition, insight, drive, and follow-through to turn that idea into something legendary.
Today, Victoria’s Secret is a global behemoth — a $5 billion-a-year brand synonymous with glamorous runway shows, lingerie supermodels, and glossy mall storefronts. But behind the glitz and glitter is a deeply tragic origin story. Long before the televised fashion shows or the Miracle Bra, there was just one man: Roy Raymond. And his idea wasn’t born out of business ambition. It was born out of embarrassment.
The Humiliating Moment That Sparked a Retail Revolution
In the mid-1970s, Raymond — a 30-year-old Stanford MBA — walked into a department store to buy lingerie for his wife. What he found was not what we are used to today. All there was to be had were ugly floral print nightgowns showcased under the harsh glare of utilitarian fluorescent lighting. To make matters worse, the saleswomen, typically older, matronly women, made Raymond feel like a pervert for just being in that department.
It occurred to Raymond that other men must want to buy their wives something sexy and must also feel out of place in the women’s undergarments department. He came up with an idea to create a market for something that currently didn’t exist – a lingerie store that would make men comfortable shopping there. Raymond pictured a Victorian-style boudoir with dark wood, oriental rugs, and silk curtains. He chose the name Victoria to give the store an air of respectability. Her “secrets” were hidden within. He created a personality when he created his store, one that men were drawn to.
From One Store to a Budding Empire
In 1977, Raymond and his wife Gaye opened the first Victoria’s Secret store in a small Palo Alto mall using $80,000 — half from a bank loan, half from family. It was a novelty. There was nothing like it in America at the time.
This may not seem like a big deal to today’s consumers, but back in the late 70s, it was a big deal. Stores like Victoria’s Secret did not exist in the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, underwear was about durability and practicality. Sexy lingerie was strictly reserved for honeymoons and anniversaries. The go-to place for this type of lingerie was Frederick’s of Hollywood. Then, the late 1960s and 1970s called for women to free themselves from the tyranny of bras. In response, the intimate apparel industry created new bras and panties that would give women the natural look they wanted, yet keep their bustline from sagging. To put it simply, underwear was function, not fun, during this era.
Raymond quickly expanded, opening four more stores and launching a mail-order catalog that brought the boudoir vibe into American homes. By 1982, the company was generating $6 million in annual revenue.
But behind the scenes, Victoria’s Secret was teetering. The business was running out of money and teetering on bankruptcy. Most importantly, Raymond didn’t realize he was missing his most crucial customer.
Leslie Wexner Saw the Bigger Picture
By the early 1980s, Leslie Wexner was already a rising legend in American retail. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Wexner grew up in Ohio and launched his first clothing store — The Limited — in 1963 with a $5,000 loan from his aunt. At the time, he noticed something most department stores had missed: working women were no longer shopping for dresses — they wanted mix-and-match sportswear that fit their evolving lifestyles.
The idea clicked. Wexner’s no-frills approach to fast fashion took off. Within a few years, The Limited had become a retail powerhouse. By 1970, he had 11 stores. By 1977, that number had jumped to 188. At age 40, he was worth $50 million.
And he was just getting started.
Over the next few decades, Wexner would build a retail empire that included brands like Express, Structure, Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, and Henri Bendel. But in the early ’80s, he was looking for his next great concept — something fresh, overlooked, and full of potential.
That’s when, while visiting a Limited store in San Francisco, he wandered into a nearby boutique he’d never seen before: Victoria’s Secret.
He was immediately intrigued. A store entirely devoted to lingerie? Nothing like it existed in the U.S. outside of sleazy adult shops or dusty department store corners. But something felt off. Despite its elegant name and moody Victorian design, the store was clearly built with men in mind. Wexner sensed the disconnect right away.
Raymond had solved his own problem — creating a space where men could shop for sexy underwear without shame — but in doing so, he had alienated the core customer: women.
Wexner believed American women wanted what European women already embraced: lingerie as fashion, not just function. Sensuality, not sleaze. And they wanted it without having to spend a fortune at high-end brands like La Perla. He saw Victoria’s Secret as the perfect vehicle to fill that gap.
In 1982, Wexner bought the company — five stores and a 42-page catalog generating $6 million a year — for about $1 million. Roughly $3 million in today’s dollars. (Note: The $4 million figure mentioned in “The Social Network” was exaggerated.)
Rebuilding Victoria’s Secret From the Inside Out
Wexner got to work immediately. He scrapped the old-school Victorian look and replaced it with open, feminine, fashion-forward stores that made women feel glamorous, not ogled. The catalog was revamped too — less racy, more aspirational, featuring models who looked like fashion icons, not pin-ups.
He restructured the product line, creating a tiered lingerie offering that combined affordability with allure. The brand hit a turning point with the release of the Miracle Bra, which became a phenomenon in the 1990s.
The balance Wexner struck was genius: Victoria’s Secret became a store where women felt beautiful and empowered, and men still enjoyed flipping through the catalogs.
By 1986, just four years after the acquisition, the company had grown to 100 stores and was generating over $100 million in annual sales. By the early 1990s, while Roy Raymond struggled in obscurity, Victoria’s Secret had become the largest lingerie retailer in the United States, with more than 350 stores and over $1 billion in annual revenue.
And a cultural footprint that only grew in the following decades with televised fashion shows, angel wings, and supermodel contracts.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Roy Raymond’s Downward Spiral
After selling Victoria’s Secret, Raymond stayed on briefly but left the company around 1984. He tried to recapture his entrepreneurial magic with a new venture: a high-end children’s clothing catalog called My Child’s Destiny.
Lightning did not strike twice.
The store’s San Francisco location had no foot traffic, the catalog targeted an impossibly narrow niche of affluent parents, and the branding never landed. In 1986, Raymond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. His marriage had already ended.
In the years that followed, Raymond watched the brand he created become a global empire — while he struggled in silence.
Roy Raymond at My Child’s Destiny (Photo by John O’Hara/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
A Devastating End
On August 26, 1993, Roy Raymond was seen walking toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Hours later, his body was found in the waters of San Francisco Bay, near the Marin County shoreline. He was 47 years old. The coroner ruled it a suicide.
Roy Raymond didn’t fail because he had a bad idea — in fact, he had an incredible one. He saw something no one else saw: that buying lingerie didn’t have to be awkward or transactional. He reimagined an entire category of retail, creating an experience that blended class, sensuality, and storytelling.
But Raymond wasn’t a retail empire-builder. He was an innovator — not an operator. He lacked the capital, infrastructure, and perhaps the temperament to take Victoria’s Secret from clever boutique to cultural juggernaut. The foundation he laid was solid, but someone else scaled it to the stratosphere.
His story is a heartbreaking reminder that being first isn’t always enough. Sometimes, the person with the spark doesn’t get to light the fire.
While Raymond’s life ended in tragedy, his influence endures. He redefined how America thinks about intimacy and lingerie — and created a brand that would go on to shape an entire generation of retail.
Leslie Wexner, who built on Raymond’s blueprint, became a billionaire many times over. At his peak, his net worth topped $7 billion, thanks largely to Victoria’s Secret. But the original idea — the seed that grew into a $5 billion global brand — was Roy’s.
Wexner’s Darker Chapter: The Epstein Connection
In later years, Leslie Wexner’s otherwise sterling business legacy was clouded by his long and deeply troubling connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Wexner was Epstein’s most prominent client — and, for a time, his closest financial associate. For reasons that have never been adequately explained, Wexner gave Epstein an unusual level of control over his personal finances, assets, and philanthropic ventures. Epstein even had power of attorney over Wexner’s fortune and was given access to properties, including a Manhattan mansion Wexner had previously owned — the same townhouse where some of Epstein’s alleged abuse occurred.
Though Wexner has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes, many questioned how someone as savvy and detail-oriented as Wexner could have missed what Epstein was doing. The two men severed ties in 2007, but the fallout escalated years later when Epstein was arrested in 2019.
Wexner later called Epstein’s behavior “abhorrent” and claimed he felt “betrayed.” Still, the relationship cast a long shadow over his reputation. In 2020, under mounting scrutiny and shifting public sentiment, Wexner stepped down from L Brands — the parent company of Victoria’s Secret.
For a man who built one of the most successful empires in retail history, the Epstein connection remains a lasting stain on Wexner’s legacy — one that complicated the story of Victoria’s Secret even further in the years after Roy Raymond’s death.
Full Circle
It’s easy to remember Roy Raymond as a cautionary tale. That’s how Sean Parker framed him — a smart guy with a good idea who couldn’t scale it fast enough and got left behind. But that version of the story flattens a life that was far more complex, creative, and human.
Raymond didn’t just invent a store. He changed a culture. He took something taboo and turned it into an experience people weren’t ashamed of. Before there were catalogs, catwalks, or Angels in wings, there was a nervous husband trying to buy something sexy for his wife — and a flash of insight that would become one of the most iconic retail brands in the world.
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