Victoria's Secret: 5 Things You Didn't Know

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Back in the old days, buying lingerie for your lady meant an embarrassing trip to the department store where derisive stares made you feel like a deviant in the grips of a perverse panty fetish. This humiliation was the impetus for a guy-friendly place where getting your lady something sexy was met with encouragement, not a raised eyebrow. That is the story of how we came to have the place we call Victoria’s Secret.

Although intimately associated with its sexy lingerie, today the retailer actually sells a wide range of women’s wear and beauty supplies. It has 1,017 stores in operation, and each year it puts 400 million copies of its famed catalog through the mail. In 2012, sales reached the $6.12 billion mark, and its parent company, Limited Brands, raked in $12.2 billion, business is clearly going well.

Modeling for any of the company’s collections is considered prestigious, but its Angels are a cut above the rest. Past and present Angels include such well-known names as Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima, Rebecca Romijn, Gisele Bundchen, Helena Christensen, and Stephanie Seymour, and it is without question the most coveted modeling job in the industry.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the only company in the world with the celestial seal of approval: Victoria’s Secret.

#1 Its founder jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge

Tired of the humiliation involved in trying to buy lingerie, Roy Raymund created Victoria’s Secret in 1977 by putting the first store at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California. After opening a few other stores and launching the mail-order catalog, Raymond sold the company to Limited Brands in 1982 for a sizable paycheck.

By 1993, Limited Brands made Victoria’s Secret a nationally recognized brand, while Raymond’s most recent business venture had ended in bankruptcy. He was last seen alive walking toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and his body was later found washed up on the shores of Marin County. Investigators finally concluded he had tragically committed suicide by leaping off the bridge.

#2 It is named after a notorious prude

So the big question is who exactly is this Victoria? Since the first stores were designed to resemble Victorian boudoirs, the company’s namesake is England’s long-reigning 19th-century monarch, Queen Victoria. She and husband Prince Albert managed to have nine children before his unexpected death in 1861 threw her into a state of profound mourning that lasted until her own death 40 years later. Supposedly she refused to take any new lovers following her husband's death.

Despite the general prudishness of Victorian society, fashions of the day included the corset, a sexually charged garment that embellished a woman’s curves above and below the waist. So what, then, was the Queen’s secret? Was she sexually adventurous? At least by the conservative standards of her day? We’ll never know. I suppose that’s why it’s a secret.

Keep reading for three more things you didn't know about Victoria's Secret...