Victoria's Secret

The shapewear buyer has changed, and the product is catching up. Across the US, Japan, and India, brands are retiring the corrective brief and replacing it with an essentials proposition: breathable, inclusive, designed for daily use, and increasingly dependent on fit technology and supply-chain sophistication to deliver what the new consumer language promises. What looks like a category evolution is, on closer inspection, a category reset.

In a landmark victory in the campaign against wage theft in the textile-apparel industry, American lingerie giant Victoria's Secret has had to cough up a US$8.3 million compensation settlement for the 1,388 workers fired without notice in March 2021 at its supplier factory in Thailand.

A first-of-its kind scorecard ranking PFAS policy commitments from a swathe of leading retail and apparel brands has put Levi Strauss & Co at the top for already eliminating PFAS from its supply chain. However, global brands like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Costco, and others received low or failing marks.