Extra Episode: Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein

Summary

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Infamous Podcast: Extra Episode - Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein (Fallen Angel, Ep. 2 "Emotional Content")

Release Date: March 5, 2026
Hosts & Reporters: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Justine Harmon, Gabriel Sherman, Natalie Robehmed
Production: Campside Media / Sony Music Entertainment

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This extra episode leverages an installment from the "Fallen Angel" podcast, focusing on the rise of Victoria’s Secret, its enigmatic founder Les Wexner, and the notorious relationship between Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein. The hosts dissect the dark underbelly of the fashion industry and explore how power, ambition, and secrecy fueled both the brand’s meteoric success and some of its most troubling associations.

The episode mixes biographical storytelling, business history, and investigative reporting, especially as it becomes newly relevant amid recent document dumps relating to Jeffrey Epstein and the renewed scrutiny on Wexner's ties to him.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Les Wexner’s Early Life and Retail Rise (02:48–10:27)

• Background: Wexner was born in 1937, raised by Russian Jewish parents who ran a clothing store in Columbus, Ohio.

• Entrepreneurial Launch: Inspired by early business observations, Wexner started "The Limited" in 1963 with a $5,000 loan—focusing on what sold best rather than big-ticket items.

  • "Les took the opportunity to examine the business’s trends and behavioral patterns…realized…unsung heroes like shirts and skirts." (06:35, Justine Harmon)

• Business Philosophy:

  • Wexner valued speed, a sense of urgency, and a relentless drive for perfection, sometimes to an intimidating degree.
  • Notable management quirk:

    • "You have to keep being curious." (05:38, Les Wexner)

    • "I don't really believe in stopping to smell the roses…I'm afraid I’m going to get hit by a truck." (09:12, Lee Peterson quoting Wexner)

  • Known for setting high expectations—sometimes with explosive language.

2. Victoria’s Secret – The Real Origin Story (12:04–18:39)

• Original Founder:

  • Roy Raymond founded Victoria’s Secret in 1977 after feeling awkward buying lingerie for his wife.

    • “He went shopping to buy something nice for his wife...made to feel like a pervert.” (12:37, unnamed associate)

    • The store’s original concept: a chic, Victorian-inspired boutique designed for men to buy gifts for women.

• Name & Vision:

  • Raymond and his wife invented the feminine, mysterious “Victoria” on a European train trip.

    • “She has a secret she’s going to hide. She’s hiding something and she doesn’t want you to know. But guess what? She does want you to know.” (15:19, unnamed associate)

3. Wexner Acquires Victoria’s Secret and Reinvents It (16:50–22:14)

• Discovery: Wexner learns of Raymond's five-store chain while expanding The Limited into San Francisco.

• Acquisition Story:

  • Wexner was immediately captivated by the shop, eventually buying it in 1982 for $1 million when Raymond’s business hit hard times.

    • “About a year later, I get a phone call…'Are you still interested in buying my business?'…He was going broken.” (18:10, Les Wexner)

• Post-Acquisition Vision:

  • Wexner pivoted the brand away from serving men (as gift shoppers) and instead targeted women directly.

    • “Victoria should be a ladies’ paradise…If men like Victoria’s Secret, that’s a bonus…they should feel uncomfortable in the store." (21:53, Les Wexner)

4. Building the Brand’s Identity: The Creation of ‘Victoria’ (22:14–27:33)

• Brand Overhaul:

  • Cindy Fadas Fields, who became CEO of Victoria’s Secret’s catalog division, worked with Wexner to reshape the brand for women by making it aspirational and feminine—but subtly sexual.
  • The company crafted an elaborate, fictional backstory for ‘Victoria,’ making her a sophisticated, European-tinged muse who guided brand decisions.

    • "Victoria was a married woman, 36 years old, living in London. Her husband was a barrister. Her mother…was French…Victoria inherited money from her mother and opened a lingerie business." (25:33, Cindy Fields)

    • “Would Victoria do this?” became the litmus test for all creative decisions. (29:14, Cindy Fields)

• Marketing Genius:

  • The catalog adopted iconic burgundy borders and the claim of being "London-based," though it was a total fabrication.
  • Use of British and French heritage was purely a brand tactic that lent elitism and romanticism to lingerie retail for the masses.

5. Victoria’s Secret’s Meteoric Success – and Founder Tragedy (29:14–33:21)

• Dominance:

  • By the early 1990s, Victoria’s Secret was the largest lingerie retailer in the U.S.—other rivals fell by the wayside.

  • “Within two years, Victoria’s Secret was taking in $500 million.” (29:14, Justine Harmon)

• Roy Raymond’s Downfall:

  • Post-sale, Raymond struggled to replicate his success with other ventures. Unhappy with Victoria’s Secret’s direction and facing personal/business turmoil, he died by suicide in 1993.

    • “The only thing I know…is that the quality of the product was no longer what it was, which is…I think common…It’s just, it’s business.” (32:03, unnamed associate)

    • “He was 46 years old.” (32:32, Justine Harmon)

6. Les Wexner, Epstein, and the Secrets of Power (33:21–37:03)

• Les Wexner’s Fortune and Intrigue:

  • Wexner’s enormous wealth (on par with modern billionaires), massive properties, and quiet power attracted attention.

    • "Wexner in the 1980s and 1990s was almost as rich as Mark Zuckerberg is today." (33:54, Gabriel Sherman)

• Jeffrey Epstein Enters the Picture:

  • Wexner met Epstein in 1986, only four years after buying Victoria’s Secret.

  • Investigative reporter Gabriel Sherman explains that:

    • “I kept asking myself the question, where did Epstein get his money?…The only named client he had was…the billionaire Leslie Wexner…He latched on to Wexner in the mid to late 1980s, and once he did, he really didn’t need any other source of money.” (34:14-36:13, Gabriel Sherman)

• Wexner’s Response:

  • Amid recent renewed scrutiny and Congressional testimony about the Epstein files, Wexner’s official response has been concise:

    • “I severed all ties with Mr. Epstein nearly 12 years ago.” (36:59, Justine Harmon)

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• On the Emotional Power of Lingerie:
  • “But lingerie is emotional content…men wear underwear, women wear underwear…but lingerie is emotional content.” (02:48, Les Wexner)
• On Brand Identity:
  • “How do you keep Mickey Mouse’s ears black?...You’d ask yourself, would Victoria do this?” (27:43, Cindy Fields)
• On Business Relentlessness:
  • “I’m afraid I’m gonna get hit by a truck…Guess not.” (09:38, Lee Peterson)
• On Epstein’s Mystery Wealth:
  • “The only named client [Epstein] had was the billionaire Leslie Wexner…he didn’t really have any other clients.” (36:13, Gabriel Sherman)
• On Retail as Entertainment:
  • “Wexner was the first person to globalize retail and to see retail as entertainment, the way fast food became entertainment.” (34:14, Gabriel Sherman)

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TIMESTAMPS FOR KEY SEGMENTS

• Wexner’s Upbringing & Retail Philosophy: 02:48–10:27
• Victoria’s Secret Original Story & Roy Raymond: 12:04–18:39
• Acquisition by Les Wexner: 16:50–19:21
• The Creation of Fictional ‘Victoria’: 22:14–27:33
• Victoria’s Secret Becomes a Juggernaut & Raymond’s Downfall: 29:14–33:21
• Jeffrey Epstein & Wexner’s Relationship: 33:21–37:03

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SUMMARY & TAKEAWAYS

• Victoria’s Secret was not originally Wexner’s idea, but his business acumen and fixation on brand fantasy turned it into an empire.
• Wexner’s perfectionism manifested in every detail, from store layout to fabricated European backstories.
• The story of Roy Raymond is a case study in founder tragedy, as he watched his vision morph and lost control, personally and financially.
• Gabriel Sherman’s reporting underscores that Epstein’s mysterious fortune may have primarily come from his association with Wexner—a relationship whose true significance and consequences are still debated.
• With the recent Epstein files release, Wexner’s decades-old choices and entanglements have returned to public scrutiny, exemplifying how power and secrecy can shape—and haunt—the elite.

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Listen to the full "Fallen Angel" series for deeper insight into Victoria's Secret and the forces that shaped (and compromised) its legacy.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

hey everyone, welcome back to infamous producer Lily Houston Smith. Here we have a brand new episode this week. It's about America's Next Top Model and about tyre banks. If you want to listen to that episode, it's in your feed now. It's called behind the Scenes of America's Next Top Model and it goes deep into the Netflix docu series that you may have watched or heard about and also talks about some things that that documentary might have left out. So go check that out if you haven't already. It's in in your feed now, but we also wanted to drop this here in your feed as a little something extra this week. If you're interested in the darker side of modeling and the fashion world, you might also like another podcast series Vanessa hosted called Fallen Angel. It's about the rise of Victoria's Secret and the complicated story of the billionaire behind it, Les Wexner. It also goes into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and how that connection became one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Epstein's money and power. This story feels especially relevant right now. As you probably know, millions of pages of so called Epstein files have recently been released as part of transparency efforts around the investigation into Epstein and his network of powerful associates. And in the wake of that release, Les Wexner was deposed by members of Congress for hours about his relationship with Epstein. Which means once again their connection is back in the headlines. So if the America's Next Top Model episode gets you thinking about the modeling industry and the powerful people behind it, definitely stay tuned and listen to the episode we're about to play you again. The series is called Fallen angel, and you can listen to the whole thing right now. We'll leave a link in the show notes for now. Here's episode two of Fallen Angel Campsite Media.

[Les Wexner]

I opened a store, and it was successful, and I was thinking about what other businesses I could start, so I said, well, I don't know anything about the shoe business. You know, half the people in the world are men, so maybe we could start a men's business. I'm a man, and I think men don't buy as much as women. And I remember saying, all the women I know wear underwear most of the time. All of the women I know would like to wear lingerie all of the time. And I'm just driving down the highway laughing my butt off and thinking what a funny thought that is. What's the difference between lingerie and underwear? You know, men wear underwear, women wear underwear. But lingerie is emotional content. And so I said, I wonder why no one's done that.

[Justine Harmon]

Welcome back to Fallen Angel, a podcast about Victoria's Secret and its many, many secrets. I'm Justine Harmon.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. This is episode two, emotional content.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

Will you ever break your spell?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Heartbreak Hollywood. So the man you just heard from is Les Wexner. We haven't talked about him much yet. He was the longtime head of Victoria's Secret until recently. The guy who got American women to wear his lingerie, his emotional content. Last episode, we gave you a taste of what we're talking about in this series. But this episode, we're going to start telling the story chronologically. That means we'll get back to Bridget, Casey, and Ed later in the series. But to understand Victoria's Secret's first baby steps, the rise of the brand, you need to understand the man who was at the head of it for so long, Les Wexner. Now, you just heard him giving a speech to the American Academy of Achievement, where President Clinton and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have had talks. And Wexner, too, even though he's just a guy from the rag trade. But Wexner didn't speak with us. We sent him a list of questions through Victoria's Secret, but they declined to participate.

[Justine Harmon]

They used to call Les the Merlin of the mall. He was famous for his fluency in the behavioral patterns that turned into capital D dollar signs for brands. The guy is also a huge philanthropist. He has given away chunks of his wealth to causes he believes in. And he happens to be the richest man In Ohio, where he has lived and worked forever. Les is sort of an unassuming, elfin looking guy with big, friendly salt and pepper eyebrows.

[Les Wexner]

By nature, I'm an optimist. I'm very open minded and flexible. So people say the older you get, you get set in your ways. I don't think so. You have to keep being curious.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

He seems like your friendliest, most even keeled uncle who just calls once a month to check in. And yet he's headed up a global lingerie company that changed sex and sexuality in America. And not only that, he got entangled with the most famous teen predator in America, Jeffrey Epstein. Before all this happened, though, he was just a kid in Columbus, Ohio.

[Les Wexner]

I felt terribly constrained just by the family circumstance. I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something, maybe create my own world or career the way I wanted it to be. Came from very modest circumstance. My father was born Leslie.

[Justine Harmon]

Les Wexner was born in 1937 and raised by two Russian Jewish merchants who ran a small clothing store. Leslie's, named after their son. As the story goes, his parents wanted to go on their first vacation in a while, and Les agreed to mine the store. But then there was a snowstorm and not too many customers. So Les took the opportunity to examine the business's trends and behavioral patterns. He realized that big ticket items like coats and fancy dresses were selling with less frequency than unsung heroes like shirts and skirts. Bella and Harry Wexner were not exactly interested in their son's feedback. Celeste was done working at Leslie's, but then he got $5,000 from his aunt Ida and opened a new store named the Limited in 1963.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Growing up in the 80s, I remember going to the Limited. It was the kind of place an adolescent could go with her mom. And it was always right on trend. It was like Zara is today, insanely successful.

[Lee Peterson]

The Limited was the talk of the specialty retail industry.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Lee Peterson worked for the Limited in Columbus, Ohio.

[Lee Peterson]

I was a little stunned when I got off the plane for the interview. As I had to walk across the Runway, there was no connectors or anything like that. It was really sort of a small town.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Lee was coming from New York, and he wasn't so sure how he felt about Columbus at first, but he was won over.

[Lee Peterson]

Les took me to the Limited's office at that time, this black warehouse with white the Limited letters on the front and this wonderful, you know, Teletubby like landscape all around it. And I thought, my God, this is more like it, you know?

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And the man behind this company was a businessman with a baby, always in blue suits, but also a real hometown, Columbus boy.

[Lee Peterson]

Well, we have our own airport here, Rebacker Air Force Base. And we started flying cargo planes loaded with merchandise from Hong Kong, which is our central key point, directly to Columbus, Ohio. I mean, there was times when we did tests, executed a test. I want 100 units that we would get it within a couple of days, have it in a store in three, four, five days, and, you know, just be way ahead of the game for any kind of crazy trend, color, fabric. We were all about sense of urgency and speed, and, I mean, there was not a lot else to do in Columbus. So devoting a lot of your attention to the work itself was pretty easy

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

to do unless Wexner wanted that attention and that loyalty from his troops. I heard him described as a tough coach, always trying to get people to shoot higher. Sometimes he got pissed. There's an anecdote about him yelling, you've got shit for brains at an employee. And Lee Peterson recalls another time that Wexner said something that raised some eyebrows.

[Lee Peterson]

We had a quarterly briefing one time, and we were doing so well. Les said to us, know, we're setting records. And I remember HR had brought out balloons, you know, and we're blowing horns and one of those quarterly briefings, and. And we were all so happy. And then Les got up there and spoke. He goes, you know what? He goes, I don't really believe in stopping to smell the roses. And it was just kind of a hush over the room. And he goes, I'm afraid I'm going to get hit by a truck. And we all looked at each other. Wow.

[Corrine]

Okay.

[Lee Peterson]

But that. That gives you an idea of the mindset. I remember looking at the person next to me and said, I thought maybe we were gonna break out some champagne or something here. Guess. Guess not.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

More after the break.

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Justine Harmon]

while Les Wexner was busy establishing himself as a business magnate in Ohio, another entrepreneur was carving his own niche in the market, all the way in Palo Alto, California.

[Roy Raymond]

When he started Victoria's Secret, people were still looking at women as women and men as men, and they didn't blend.

[Justine Harmon]

You were probably under the impression that Les Wexner dreamed up Victoria's Secret, but he didn't. A guy named Roy Raymond did back in 1977.

[Roy Raymond]

He said that he went shopping to buy something nice for his wife and he wanted to buy her some sexy lingerie. And he couldn't find it. And he was made to feel like a pervert.

[Justine Harmon]

That's a business associate of Roy Raymond's. She asked that we not use her name, but she knows a lot about his dealings. What Roy Raymond realized back in the 70s was that guys had nowhere to buy lingerie for their wives or women, not their wives.

[Roy Raymond]

See, before Roy, there were only two places to get lingerie, and one was at Sears. And you get white, you know, grandma lingerie, white bras, maybe a black one if you were a little racy. And then the other place would be some of the. What is that shop where you go buy Frederick's of Hollywood. So there was no in between. We either had slutty lingerie or we had white lingerie. And this was the time when women were just climbing the ladder to pierce the glass ceiling and they were wearing business suits. And he always felt that the business suits were great for climbing the ladder, but it took away from their femininity. And so his vision was under the stiff suit. It was important that women still felt feminine.

[Justine Harmon]

Roy Raymond realized that women yearned to feel both powerful and feminine at the same time. And his stores evoked a bygone era. The small, intimate spaces were furnished with Victorian decor Ornate rugs and Tiffany lamps. He sold silky, demure teddies and provocative lace bras in sumptuous reds and powdery pinks. Early catalogs featured models who were thin and white with romantic tendrils framing their faces.

[Roy Raymond]

And this is what I learned from him. In business, it's not that you go in and you copy someone else. You go in and you create from nothing. You bring something in that doesn't exist. You find what's needed and wanted. Now that to me is a brilliant business move for him. So he created a market and a need that women went, oh my gosh, look what I get to try on. Because they didn't have that before.

[Justine Harmon]

The catchy name Victoria's Secret. Roy came up with that too.

[Roy Raymond]

He was on a trip in Europe with his wife on a train and they, Victoria was a fictitious name. They just fought it up on, on the train and then they went into, okay, let's, let's make it something secretive. She has a secret she's going to hide. She's hiding something and she doesn't want you to know. But guess what? She does want you to know.

[Justine Harmon]

All the while, Les Wexner, who was busy growing his company, the Limited Brands and then later L Brands, couldn't get the idea of a place that sold lingerie, not just underwear, but lingerie, out of his mind. He had spent two or three years, he said, looking all over the world for the shop of his dreams.

[Les Wexner]

As I was traveling around in Europe, Asia, in my mind, I said, there must be this wonderful lingerie shop.

[Justine Harmon]

He looked in Paris and Zurich, Berlin and Vienna, but nothing gave him that feeling, that emotional charge.

[Les Wexner]

They don't exist.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Whether you think this is a normal thing for a middle aged guy to be into or not, we're not judging that.

[Les Wexner]

So I had this imagination that there's this wonderful lingerie store, except I can't find one in Paris.

[Justine Harmon]

But then on one trip to the west coast, while putting the finishing touches on a San Francisco location of the Limited, the shop girls told him about Roy Raymond's small, roughly 800 square feet lingerie shop just down the street.

[Lee Peterson]

We were on a merchant trip and the head merchant of the trip said to us, you know, Les is really thinking about buying this company called Victoria's Secret. And so went down to Union Street. We're walking up and down Union Street. We came across this big blue house, basically, you know, classic San Francisco house with the three turrets and a front three story. You walked up the stairs and the whole right hand side was a store. And it was covered in, like, velvet and lingerie and, you know, the right kind of chandeliers and, you know, great employees. And it was very cozy, very warm. The vibe in there, I believe, classical music, sensual. Like a really wonderful sensual atmosphere. And, you know, we looked at each other, and I walked around there for a while, and I thought, what is he crazy? You know, like, what's he thinking? And even the head merchant at the time was like, well, you know, he's done everything right to this point, so I think we've got to have faith in him.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So the wheels were turning with Les Wexner getting interested in Victoria's Secret. But at first, Roy Raymond didn't even want to meet Wexner.

[Les Wexner]

I called the owner up, found out who the owner was, and I called him. I said, geez, next time I'm in San Francisco, I'd like to meet you. And he said, oh, I don't want to meet you, because if I. You just want to understand my secrets. And about a year later, I get a phone call. This is Roy Raymond. Are you still interested in buying my business? And I said, well, maybe I'll be out in a week or two. He said, no, if you want to buy the business, you got to come out right now. He was going broken.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So in this telling, Les saved Roy Raymond by buying Victoria's Secret. In 1982, he acquired Roy's business, which had catalog five stores, focused on men buying lingerie for women for a million bucks, according to the New York Times.

[Les Wexner]

I didn't know what the margin was. I didn't know anything about it. Didn't know about Fits Constructions, all this stuff. I said I'd figure it out. And so bought the business. And we were a public company. I called our board, and I said, well, I bought this business. And the response was, well, everybody can have a toy. If this is something you want to play with, it's okay. But it could never be a business.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

More about Victoria and her secrets after the break.

[Corrine]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

What podcast, Corinne? Tell us.

[Corrine]

Oh, it's called Blink Jake Handle's story. I created it about a man named Jake who I met, who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use. But there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime. Elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So this is definitely an amazing story and very unique. Did such an incredible job telling the story and sharing it with the world.

[Corrine]

So if you have not listened to

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Corrine]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Corrine]

Wait, I need to know more. Tell me.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Tell me everything.

[Corrine]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Corrine]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

I really need to know what happens.

[Corrine]

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[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So Les Wexner finally had Roy Raymond's business, but he was going to change it a bit. Unlike Roy, whose intimate Victorian boudoir catered to men buying lingerie for women, Les was focused on making Victoria's Secret a place for women themselves.

[Les Wexner]

The notion of Victoria should be a ladies paradise. If men like Victoria's Secret, that's kind of a bonus. But in my imagination, they should feel uncomfortable when they're in the store. There's no mahogany paneling. There's nothing that's welcoming. This is a ladies paradise. It's nothing to do with men.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

It's a pretty funny thing. Rory Raymond started Victoria's Secret because he felt like a pervert. He in lingerie stores buying teddies for his wife. Right. He thought of it as a place where men could shop for their fantasies. But Les may have also known that in order to make serious money, he had to seduce the female customer herself. He stripped away the mahogany and the blushing boyhood gaze. And he hired an expert to tap into the female psyche. Hello. Thank you for having us. Your beautiful home.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

Oh, my pleasure. I always liked old houses, and I always wanted to live in one.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Cindy Fadas fields is equal parts floaty and grounded. She's got her hair cut in a blonde lady bob, and she lives in a brownstone with the walls painted flush of summer pink, sort of like Victoria's Secret stores.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

Well, I joined the company in 1984. Les Wexner was. Was the best retailer in the land. And the opportunity to work for him in a business that I found fascinating really rang my chimes. My girlfriend said, why don't you ask Les for a job? I dare you to send him a telegram. I mean, that's how long ago this was. Telegrams.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Once Cindy was hired by Victoria's Secret, she wanted to focus on mail order clothes. That was a sector that had huge growth in the 80s. It was like the Internet, but in your hand on paper.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

Exactly.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And the Victoria's Secret catalog, millions of people got it. But the way that Les executives had conceived of it was sort of dusty and old. The catalogs might have a picture of a man nuzzling a woman on the COVID sort of like a paperback romance novel.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

She's dressed in a bustier and a bikini and their polka dot, and he's nuzzling her. So I don't know what's going to happen next, but I'm glad the camera was turned off.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Eventually, Cindy became the CEO of the catalog business, and she wanted to change the look.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

The charge was from Les to me and the creative director of the catalog. Make it classic, classy, tasteful, timeless. Make it English. So it's like to the man are born, Our girl is to the man are born.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So this was your first catalog From Autumn Preview, 1987.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

The book is bordered by a deep burgundy shade that became a signature shade of the brand. And it says quite clearly Victoria's Secret

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

London, which did not exist. There was no real Victoria's Secret London headquarters, just one tiny little business office over there. But this was all part of Les marketing genius. He loved European and Britishy things, horses, big mansions, pomp and circumstance, Just sort of pretentious, but that's what he was into. And he had another idea that impressed Cindy.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

So Les had read a book that talked about the importance of having a meeting prior to ever starting to shoot a film. And it was called the Bagel meeting. And everybody sat around and read the script and talked about the story. So we, but mostly Les invented the story of Victoria. And the story became the Holy Grail, the touchstone. Victoria was a married woman, 36 years old, living in London. Her husband was a barrister. Her mother, who was deceased, was French. Her father, who was still living, was a very successful businessman. Victoria was introduced to fashion and luxury and the importance of being feminine by her French mother. When her mother passed away, tragically killed in a car accident, Victoria inherited money from her mother. So she opened the lingerie business. It was a way for her to honor the Frenchness of her, her mother. So even though she was English, raised in England, had all of this refined English sensibility, she still loved and appreciated the romance, the fantasy of French femininity.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Okay, okay. Anyway, that's quite the story. So, yes, a fully fictional woman was created to sell underwear.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

I am sure that our fantasy Victoria and her husband had a good, healthy sex life, but they would never be blatant about it.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

But the real reason that the muse Victoria was so important, she kept everyone at the company working towards one common goal. That's what Cindy says.

[Cindy Fadas Fields]

There were hundreds and hundreds of people touching the catalog every day. Package designers at the store, store layout, internal designers, the photographers of the catalog. And how do you keep all of these people focused? Les used to use this example. How do you keep Mickey Mouse's ear ears black? You may think Mickey Mouse should have green ears, so you go off and make Mickey's ears green. But I'm working on catalog, and I think his ear should be pink. And now all of a sudden, nobody can recognize Mickey. So you would ask yourself the question, would Victoria do this? And so you would say to Victoria, can I change Mickey's ears from black to pink? And Vicki would say, no. So I know it sounds goofy, but it was a powerful, powerful tool. Les was sort of this nerdy guy who was trying very hard to create the perfect life for himself. He has builds this magnificent house of his with the horse barn and the party barn and the pool to bathe the horses and I mean everything. He worked to make everything perfect.

[Justine Harmon]

Within two years, Victoria's Secret was taking in $500 million. Like Victoria's Angels would later, Les new company sprouted its wings.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Fredericks of Hollywood had filed for Chapter 11 earlier this month.

[Podcast Host]

Even as its arch rival, the lingerie

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

leviathan, Victoria's Secret reported.

[Lee Peterson]

By the early 90s, Victoria's Secret had already become the largest lingerie retailer in

[Les Wexner]

the US with three There was a

[Lee Peterson]

guy, he was the Columbus truck driver. He was just driving around all day bringing returns back. He retired with several million dollars worth of limited stock in the mid-80s and was just that happiest guy on earth.

[Justine Harmon]

With Victoria firmly in charge, Les Wexner was becoming richer and richer. And his fortune didn't only come from Victoria's Secret, it came from his other companies, too. Lane Bryant, Bath Body Works, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Yep, another brand that targeted hot young things. Much like Victoria's Secret.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Today, sex like Victoria's Secret is everywhere.

[Justine Harmon]

What Les did with the brand became such a big story, such an apocryphal NBA wet dream, that you might even remember people talking about it in the Social Network. So in this scene, Mark Zuckerberg is at a nightclub with the guy who founded Napster. And that guy is telling him that miracles happen in business when the right guy gets involved. As Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker puts it,

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

a Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants

[Justine Harmon]

to buy his wife's A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie. He comes up with a high end place that doesn't make you feel like a pervert. After five years, he sells the company to Leslie Wexner for a big payday. Except that wasn't the way the story ended. At least not for Roy Raymond. While Les Wexner got to work on proving his board wrong and turning Victoria's Secret into a household name, Roy Raymond continued to try and disrupt other marketplaces with varying degrees of success. He and his business partner co founded a store for women who had cancer.

[Roy Raymond]

We offered everything from hair pieces to lingerie, pretty mastectomy lingerie, as opposed to orthopedic type Brasil. We had a salon, we had massage, we had scarf tying. People could come in that didn't want to wear a wig, that we'd teach them how to do scarves. We did makeup. And again, it was the vision and it was his. It was my business, but it was his vision.

[Justine Harmon]

Did you ever get a sense from him how he felt about Victoria's Secret after he exited the business?

[Roy Raymond]

The only thing that I know is that the. Everything changed as it grew. Yeah. And the quality of the product was no longer what it was, which is, I think, common. You know, when you get a small business startup and then it's taken over by a larger conglomerate and they grow it, they're always going to be looking how to, you know, get it cheaper and how to. It's just, it's business

[Justine Harmon]

in 1993. The same year that Victoria's Secret introduced a push up bra called the Miracle bra and sold 2 million units. Roy Raymond, the man who founded Victoria's Secret, the man who tried and failed to dream up another business unicorn, parked his Toyota on the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped off the ledge to his death. He was 46 years old. What do you think motivated Roy?

[Roy Raymond]

Oh, boy. Recognizing. Just recognizing again what was missing. He had a vision of women being beautiful.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Recognizing what was missing. You could say the same about Les Wexner. He was a great leader, inspired by other people's ideas and always building on them. But Les wealth, it also made him a target. Gabe, it's so nice to see you.

[Gabriel Sherman]

It's good to see you.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So why did you get interested in Les Wexner? Gabriel Sherman is a Vanity Fair writer famous for covering Fox News Roger Ailes. More recently, he's been looking into Wexner. He says that Wexner's assets were insane.

[Gabriel Sherman]

I mean, Wexner in the 1980s and 1990s was, you know, almost as rich as like Mark Zuckerberg is today.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

So in 1986, only four years after Les bought Victoria's Secret, he met Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein had his eye on all that.

[Gabriel Sherman]

Les had the largest private yacht owned by an American. It was like one of the first super yachts before, like, the Saudi princes started in, the Russian oligarchs started building them. I would liken him to Ray Kroc, who founded McDonald's. Like the modern McDonald's, in that Wexner was the really the first person to globalize retail and to see retail as entertainment, the way fast food became entertainment. Now. Looking at him as a human being, you know, he's a. He's a very complicated person. You know, Wexner lived in fear of, you know, kind of being his own man and making his own life choices separate from business.

[Les Wexner]

Maybe I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something I

[Lee Peterson]

don't really believe in. Stopping to smell the roses.

[Les Wexner]

I, by nature, am not.

[Lee Peterson]

I'm afraid I'm gonna get hit by a truck.

[Les Wexner]

Maybe create my own world.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

According to Gabe, Jeffrey Epstein stepped into that breach.

[Gabriel Sherman]

So I've been covering the Epstein story writ large since he was arrested in 2019. And I kept asking myself the question, where did Epstein get his money? When Epstein died, he had a 550 plus million dollar estate, but no one could explain where the money came from. And so as I looked into that question, I kept circling back to the only named client he had which was the billionaire Leslie Wexner. And the more reporting I did, I realized that Wexner is the strongest link that we have to understanding the source of Epstein's wealth.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

In fact, Gabe believes that part of Epstein's money over the years didn't come from managing all sorts of rich guys funds. As Epstein said, it came mostly from Les Wexner's bank account.

[Gabriel Sherman]

For 20 plus years, the only client that Epstein publicly talked about was Wexner. And friends of Epstein's that I interviewed would say that they would ask him, you know, whose money do you manage? Who are your other clients? And he says, well, I can't get into it. And, you know, Epstein was a master bullshit artist. And, you know, it leads most people to believe that he didn't really have. Have any other clients and that, you know, he latched on to Wexner in the mid to late 1980s, and once he did, he really didn't need any other source of money.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

What Epstein and Wexner's relationship was all about and how it affected Victoria's Secret, that's one of the mysteries surrounding the brand new tonight, Les Wexner is responding. In a statement today, Wexner says, I

[Justine Harmon]

severed all ties with Mr. Epstein nearly 12 years ago.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Fallen Angel. If you want to hear the rest of the story again, the link is in the show notes. You can also just look up Fallen angel wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. We'll be back next week with another episode of Infamous. See you then.