There are so many reasons to despise Victoria’s Secret right now, every time I write one of these posts I feel like I’m dancing around the company’s freshly unearthed gravesite. As if the news that the brand’s parent company CEO was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein or the explosive transphobic, fatphobic comments made by an executive weren’t enough, an indie lingerie designer is calling out the company for blatantly copying her designs.
Jennifer Zuccarini, designer of the label Fleur du Mal and former design director for Victoria’s Secret between 2008 and 2011, tells the Wall Street Journal that the brand appears to be copying her work. At a certain point Zuccarini became aware that Victoria’s Secret was buying her products, but they weren’t being shipped to headquarters. Instead, $12,656 worth of Fleur du Mal products were sent to an associate buyer’s home address, a discovery publicly posted by Instagram fashion industry watchdog account Diet Prada.
While Zuccarini does have grounds to sue, she says she isn’t interested in pursuing legal action. The copying accusations are just another addition to a well-documented history of fast fashion brands like Victoria’s Secret stealing from smaller brands, and yet another example of why the lingerie company needs to completely revamp its entire brand or call it quits.