Get Latest Business News from All Over the World 24/7 throughout the Year: These before-and-after photos show just how much Victoria's Secret stores have changed

Victoria's Secret Bond Street store.
Insider/Mary Hanbury

Victoria's Secret plans to remodel all its stores as part of its rebrand under new management.
We visited Victoria's Secret London flagship store and found five key changes.
They included quieter music and more inclusive displays in store windows.
See more stories on Insider's business page.

Victoria's Secret plans to remodel its more than 1,400 stores over the next few years as part of a brand turnaround under a new management team.

Progress is underway: It unveiled its new-look flagship store in New York's Manhattan in July, and has been gradually making changes at other locations.

Insider visited its London flagship store in July and saw the updates first-hand. Here are five of the biggest changes we spotted during our visit, with photos from before and after.

More inclusive displays in store windows

The most immediate difference was the ads in the windows. Images of scantily dressed models - often its iconic Angels - had replaced photos of fuller-figured women wearing day-to-day pieces from its underwear collections.

Victoria's Secret ended its Angels brand in June, saying that it was "no longer culturally relevant." Angels have been synonymous with the brand image since the late 1990s.

'Borderline pornographic' images scrapped

Victoria's Secret has drastically cut the number of photos and ads in stores. Semi-nude images of its Angels and other models, in the past described as "borderline pornographic" by some shoppers, previously decorated the walls. These were taken down across this store.

In their place were blank walls, except for images from its newer campaigns at the front of the store.

According to a spokesperson for the company, the idea is to cut back on distracting marketing to let the product speak for itself.

Fuller-size mannequins in stores

One of the biggest criticisms of the brand has been the lack of representation of plus-size models in both Victoria's Secret's ads and runway shows. And while some shoppers say it hasn't gone far enough in adding extended sizes, the introduction of plus-size and fuller-size mannequins in stores was noticeable.

These were not used throughout the store, however - they were limited to its teen-centric brand Pink.

Turning up the lights, turning down the music

One of the more straightforward changes Victoria's Secret has made is turning up the lights and turning down the music in stores (something Abercrombie did in 2014). This instantly makes the store feel fresher and brighter.

Its signature bubblegum pink and black interiors, with rich velvet furniture, remained, however. A spokesperson told Insider that it will update all its stores to a more muted color scheme in the future.

Fewer promotions

Victoria's Secret Pink comparison — Promotions in a Pink store in New York's Manhattan in 2018 (L). London's Bond Street store in July (R).
Insider/Mary Hanbury

Deals and discounts were a mainstay at Victoria's Secret and Pink in 2018 and 2019 as the brands tried to lure customers and sell unwanted inventory.

While there were still sale sections in this store, most products were advertised at full price. This matched with recent research from UBS analysts, who found that Victoria's Secret had far fewer discounts in May 2021 than in May 2019.

"This boosts our confidence that the Victoria's Secret turnaround is real," these analysts said.

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