Six months after appointing a woman as its top marketer, Victoria’s Secret is making its first major move in its long-awaited turnaround. On Wednesday evening, the underwear chain announced its biggest effort yet to overhaul its much-criticized image—the VS Collective, a group including the likes of soccer star Megan Rapinoe and body advocate Paloma Elsesser, will appear in ads and other initiatives for the beleaguered brand.

Retail experts say the news is a step in the right direction, but success depends on how Victoria’s Secret utilizes its new partners. In addition, the brand may struggle to regain lost ground from competitors that have long-promoted body positivity.

The notion of celebrating women’s bodies with realistic spokespeople like Rapinoe is a departure from the over-sexualized marketing Victoria’s Secret has promoted in the past. Yet it comes not a moment too soon, as the chain has repeatedly come under fire in recent years for its unrealistic beauty standards and a boys’ club culture behind the scenes. Former Chief Marketing Officer Ed Razek, who was criticized for public remarks he made against transgender models, left the brand in 2019, the same year the retailer dispensed with its Fashion Show.

Victoria’s Secret has been speaking out about a marketing turnaround for years; but at parent company L Brand’s investor day in 2019, only one woman presented about the supposedly female-led plan.

Martha Pease joined as CMO in December from Boston Consulting Group after consulting with the brand earlier last year. 

“What women really want from us is for us to show up understanding their world—they want the lens of our brand to be the perspective of a woman and they want our brand to reflect the multitude and huge dimensionality that makes up the world of women,” says Pease. “We’re not just delivering product, not just delivering a store experience, we are not just delivering e-commerce—we are delivering a relationship with women.”

She says the brand has spent years surveying shoppers and former shoppers to understand how it can build better customer relationships.

“Our brand positioning—our mantra—is that we are here for her and I’m absolutely dedicated to shifting the role we play in her life to be one of advocacy.”

In the meantime, however, competitors have been gaining ground. Several startups, many of which bill themselves in a purposefully anti-Victoria’s Secret image, now have loyal followings. Brands such as Third Love, Lively and Negative Underwear tout direct-to-consumer service and body-positive imagery. Similarly, American Eagle’s Aerie underwear brand has built its business on realistic portrayals of the body that promote comfort over sex appeal.

“Dropping the ball really gave other brands the opportunity to move in,” says Gabriella Santaniello, founder of retail consultancy A Line Partners. “Their biggest competitor is Aerie at American Eagle—they’re the ones who really pioneered the body positivity movement.”

Santaniello points out that the new faces linked to Victoria’s Secret are what shoppers, and younger generations especially, want to see in advertising. They’re very relatable, she says.

“It’s not aspirational—you can see yourself in that individual representing the brand, whereas before it was very that’s what I aspire to be and I have to go on a diet for a year to even look that way,” Santaniello says. “Now the younger generation really wants to see themselves reflected in the marketing of companies whose clothes they wear.”

Teaming up with the new group of ambassadors shows that Victoria’s Secret “is serious about evolving and moving beyond its tarnished image which has traditionally been based on sexualized imagery rather than substance,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. “The women it is partnering with are great advocates and achievers and their stories and experience will resonate with large numbers of customers.”

While Saunders says the brand is “on the right track,” he cautions that it will take time to “reattract lost customers and to take share from newer rivals.”

For the most recent quarter, Victoria's Secret reported a 7% decline in net sales to $1.6 billion. Since 2019, the underwear chain has closed 233 stores.

The new initiative will include programs for associates, product collections and marketing content, as well as promotions of cause-related initiatives, Victoria’s Secret announced. In addition to Rapinoe and Elsesser, the VS Collective includes Amanda de Cadenet, a journalist and equality advocate; Eileen Gu, a skier and model; Priyanka Chopra Jonas, an actor and entrepreneur; and Valentina Sampaio, an LGBTQIA+ advocate and actor.

“We looked to women who were very publicly setting very diverse narratives in their own lives,” says Pease, noting the brand wanted partners who would be “willing to have some vulnerability around the messiness of building your own narrative. Megan Rapinoe doesn’t just show up as a world-class soccer player—it’s not the only thing she does and not the only thing that defines her,” she says.

The new partners will work with the retailer on product design and development, branding and content creation and purpose-driven programming. All of Victoria’s Secret brand work is done in-house, Pease says. The new group of partners is just the start of the brand’s overhaul and there will be other partners involved in the future, she says.

Earlier this year, L Brands announced it would spin off Victoria’s Secret and sister brand Bath & Body Works into separate companies by August. On Wednesday, L Brands announced seven proposed board members for Victoria's Secret, including six women.

Experts say how the new relationships with the VS Collective partners are utilized will be critical. It’s not as simple as putting the spokeswomen in lingerie in commercials, notes Barbara Kahn, Patty and Jay H. Baker professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but I’m not sure it’s directly aligned with their brand DNA so I have a feeling there might be missteps in the future,” she says. “They have to get their product line aligned and think through how they use these spokeswomen in their advertising. Not sure having them pose in their underwear would be the right move.”