Victoria’s Secret accused of ripping off black-founded brands

Victoria’s Secret is yet again being accused of stealing designs from other companies, but this time the underwear giant is being called out for targeting black-owned businesses in particular.

Last year, fashion watchdog Diet Prada revealed that some new Victoria’s Secret designs looked strikingly similar to ones by another brand, Fleur du Mal — and Fleur du Mal alleged that an associate buyer for Victoria’s Secret had purchased $12,656 worth of their lingerie before the copycats came out.

Now, Diet Prada says that Victoria’s Secret is at it again, debuting new lingerie that is nearly identical to pieces by the British brand Edge o’ Beyond after a high-ranking employee bought those very Edge o’ Beyond pieces — and seemingly planning to do the same with the brand d.bleu.dazzled.

‘Troubled lingerie retailer and repeat offender @victoriassecret refuses to just go out of business in peace, and instead seems intent on keeping up to their old tricks ’til the very end,’ Diet Prada wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday. 

‘Recently, two panty styles popped up on the VS site, both featuring distinct similarities to signature elements from Black-owned lingerie brand @edgeobeyond.’

Diet Prada included side-by-side comparisons of pieces from Edge o’ Beyond’s ‘Daisy’ range — which features yellow, coral, and light blue floral embroidery over sheer mesh, with a black scalloped trends — and the new VS pieces, which have the same color scheme, near-identical embroidery, and a matching trim.

Suspicious, Edge O’ Beyond searched through its order history and found that a customer who has the same full name as the Creative Operations Coordinator at Victoria’s Secret bought £1,150 ($1,506.86) worth of lingerie, including items from the Daisy range. 

‘Seeing someone as big as Victoria’s Secret, during the era of BLM, preying on an independent black business and then using predominantly brown and black prison labour to copy our products was a HUGE slap in the face,’ Edge O’ Beyond founder Naomi De Haan told Diet Prada. 

She also supplied a screenshot of the order and of the VS employee’s LinkedIn page. 

The LA-based brand d.bleu.dazzled reportedly discovered something similar. Its founder and designer, Destiney Bleu, ‘noticed a suspicious discrepancy on an order.’

The customer had bought a bra and panty in two different colors, both in a size small, as well as a bra in a size XL, which was the last one in stock.

The customer also ordered a $300 skirt, a shorter version of one Beyoncé wears in Black is King.

‘My intuition told me today to google the name of this large order,’ Bleu told Diet Prada. ‘It’s standard practice… in case it’s fraud, or a stylist/influencer and we want to send any extra gifts or a note.’

But when she searched, she found a LinkedIn page for a customer with the same name — who is Victoria’s Secret’s Vice President of Design.

Bleu said the billing address was the same as Victoria’s Secret’s corporate office. 

In this case, the lingerie giant won’t get a chance to inspect the designs up close, since Bleu canceled the order.

‘Having faced myriad problems this past year, you’d think VS employees would have learned to make their LinkedIn pages private by now, Diet Prada remarked.

This isn’t the first time that VS has been accused of buying from smaller lingerie brands and copying their designs.

In July of 2019, Diet Prada reported that Fleur du Mal made similar accusations, calling out an associate buyer with Victoria’s Secret for allegedly purchased $12,656 worth of Fleur du Mal’s lingerie before manufacturing similar styles.

‘Half of the order was for Fleur du Mal’s embroidered and appliquéd Lily bras and panties, dupes of which unsurprisingly showed up for sale on VS website and Instagram two days ago (at half the price),’ the post explained. 

The account again included side-by-side comparisons of two designs by both Fleur du Mal and Victoria’s Secret. 

However, Diet Prada pointed out that this case might be a bit more complicated, as the founder of Fleur du Mal, Jennifer Zuccarini, previously worked as a design director at Victoria’s Secret grom 2008 to 2011.  

In 2017, Fleur du Mal was called ‘Hollywood’s go-to lingerie line’ by the Observer after gaining a plethora of A-list clientele that included the Kardashian family, Ashley Graham, Lady Gaga and Sienna Miller.  

While it appears the newer brand continues to grow in popularity, Victoria’s Secret has experienced recent issues with sales and plunging ratings.  

The next month, VS was also accused of copying UK-based company Agent Provocateur after the former released a black mesh bra and panty set that looked identical to a set released by the latter last year. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to Victoria’s Secret for comment.