It's A Man's World

A modeling agency linked to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of the chain’s worries.

- Kim Bhasin, Jordyn Holman, Sophie Alexander, and Anders Melin

Time isn’t being kind to Victoria’s Secret. The lingerie retailer has a problem with the past and a problem with the future—and that leaves the present in a muddle of controversy.

Jeffrey Epstein is supposed to be history at the company—and at its parent, L Brands Inc., for that matter—but he’s that skeleton that keeps rattling around the closet to remind everyone he was once an all-too-lively part of the business. Epstein had a two-decade-long reign as close confidant, financial manager, and right hand to the corporation’s chief executive officer, Leslie Wexner. He even had the CEO’s power of attorney at one time.

Although he wasn’t an employee at Victoria’s Secret, Epstein also influenced the way the lingerie company operated, associating with the division’s chief marketing officer, Ed Razek. In 2005, for example, Razek was a guest at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, welcomed by young women who said they were working as models for Epstein. Razek told fellow guest William Mook, head of Mok Industries LLC in Columbus, Ohio, that Victoria’s Secret used Epstein models and that his girls were in “the major league,” according to Mook.