VICTORIA’S SECRET: More than Meets the Eye

About every three days one arrives in your mailbox. And, unless you’re blind or terminally asexual, you probably spend more than a few moments with it. If you’re a guy, you ogle the models-long-legged, big-breasted girls gazing straight at you in various stages of apparent disrobing.

If you’re a woman, you study the models. Women scrutinize women to learn what works. And in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, everything seems to be working overtime all the time.

As a fairly reasonable adult, I should know that Victoria’s Secret will not change my life. From the catalog’s first-name-only bombshells to the store’s hushed-tone boudoir surroundings to the British-clipped voice that directs my order to a real person in oh-my Ohio, the company’s promise of a sexier me is a shameless marketing technique as transparent as its sheer mesh bodywear. Intellectually, I understand that they’re really just selling underwear. But I can’t say I believe it.

My thirst! for VS began innocently (enough about five years ago, soon after the birth of my first child. I needed some underwear-and a drastic change from the big and ugly pregnancy garments in which I’d been trapped. I picked up the phone and ordered the classic Emma bra-“a favorite for its body hugging, stretch lace comfort,” said the catalog-and its matching high-cut brief, White. Simple. 1 did feel better about myself. A few weeks later I called tor another. Black. “And throw in the Natalie in ivory-the demi cut,” I added nonchalantly.

The catalog addiction was beginning. Soon I began to look for the sales issues. Preview Summer Sale. Summer Sale. End of Summer Sale. As long as they were practically giving it away, I might as well stock up. A few phone calls and I had it all: under-wires, camisoles, bikini briefs, and hipsters in appealing textures- scalloped lace, second-skin satin, pure cotton-and delicious col-ors-pale pink, champagne, butter. Still, this was just about underwear, I thought. Then came a trip to The Store.

Victoria’s Secrets stores, I learned, are a celebration of Womanhood, a sorority-like enclave where women can be women and men are, well, almost beside the point. Silk pajamas, short strap-py charmeuse chemises, and kimono wraps evoke all kinds of images. Think of Liz Taylor’s voluptuous Maggie the Cat, purring to Paul Newman’s deaf ears, gorgeous in her desperation in a close-fitting, scallop-edged slip of pristine white silk. Think of Katharine Hepburn, whose progression from uptight Main Line Miss Lord to tantalizing Miss Tracy is marked in Philadelphia Story by similar changes in intimate apparel: from the demure beribboned cotton gown in the opening sequence to the carefree and sumptuous inches-thick terry robe she surprises Cary Grant with after a late-night swim. The possibilities seem endless. I started to buy.

As time went on, and the birth of my second child came and went in a flurry of unsexy, unexciting undergarments, these tasteful temptations from the foremost region of the store were no longer enough. I became the true devotee, pressing onward, past the VS perfumes, the VS cassette collections of symphony favorites, through the overdecorated interior to the back room where men dare not enter. This is the land of truly intimate apparel where there are, ironically, no secrets-at least among women.

“I’m looking for those things, I-don’t-know-what-you-call-them, that you paste on and they’re like a bra but they’re not,” confides one NorthPark customer to a sales representative. “I need help,” admits another woman. “The air conditioning at the office is turned too low…” A third gathers a supply of Miracle Bras.

Sometimes the sorority is broken. A girl will bring her boyfriend or an embarrassed husband will stumble through to find a gift. Or even worse: “I’ve heard there’s a man who works in the Highland Park Village store,” a friend reveals over the phone one day.

A Victoria’s Secret store, you see, is where grown-up girls go to play dress-up. It’s a clubhouse with a sign firmly attached-No Boys Allowed-so we can experiment, hypothesize, test, and perhaps even discover what works. So we’ll be ready for Cary, should he cross our path; we’ll he as seductive as Liz, if we choose to be; and, at the end of our rat-race days we’ll slip on silk, uncork some wine, and feel like a million. Tell me this is just about underwear.