Racy knickers brand Victoria’s Secret is set to launch a new female sportswear range known as Victoria Sport and already its intentions appear clear – steal Nike customers.
The brand expansion comes amid spluttering sales of its lingerie range globally (it canned its swimwear range in April) and a move in marketing for females to be shown as healthy and fit and not just sexy and long-legged. There’s also been a huge demand for “athleisure wear” in recent times, or sportswear that’s not necessarily worn for doing anything sporty.
Victoria Sport launched yesterday with a racy social media campaign that still featured the obligatory supermodels. The trio of beauties are then interviewed on their views of what constitutes a comfortable sports bra.
On its website the company says “the worlds #1 bra brand just created the world’s best sport bras” and includes a quote from supermodel and regular Victoria Secret “Angel” Jasmine Tookes (below) saying, “When I tried these, I threw out all my Nike bras.”
On its site, Victoria Sports talks about the importance of its sports bras and the different sizes for women’s body shapes. They come in widths 30-40 and A-DDD, rather than just XS-XL. “If a bra doesn’t fit, you won’t wear it,” the site proclaims.
And it’s clear that sports bras is where everybody thinks the battle will be won or lost.
Coincidentally, yesterday Nike posted an image of the plus-size model Paloma Elsesser to its Nike Women’s Instagram account.
Typically, viewers of the site get super-fit models wearing the sports giant’s gear (see above); however, the new approach with Elsesser has proven a winner. It’s already garnered 70,000 likes and attracted comments such as these: “Beautiful. More of this please, @nikewomen”, “Let’s hear it for the curvy, sexy, sporty, women,” and “Love love love! I know a few brands who could learn from this ad.
