How Epstein used a billionaire’s brand to lure women for over a decade
Jeffrey Epstein never worked for Victoria’s Secret. Not as a recruiter, not as a talent scout, not in any official capacity whatsoever. L Brands has said as much. They’ve been clear that he was never an employee or authorized representative of the company.
So why did young women across America and Europe spend over a decade believing otherwise?
Because Epstein told them so. And because the people who could have stopped him chose not to.
In 1993, Cindy Fedus-Fields was running Victoria’s Secret’s catalog division when another female executive came to her with troubling news. A man was going around New York City claiming to recruit models for the brand. His name was Jeffrey Epstein. Fedus-Fields recognized trouble immediately. She asked for Leslie Wexner to be called directly. According to her account in the Hulu documentary Angels and Demons, Wexner said he would put a stop to it.
He didn’t.
Four years later, a 27-year-old actress and model named Alicia Arden showed up at the Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica, California. Her booker had arranged what she believed was an audition for the Victoria’s Secret catalog. The man she was meeting had identified himself as a talent scout for the lingerie giant. When she arrived at his room, he was barefoot. He asked to see her body up close. Then he grabbed her buttocks, tried to pull off her clothes, and told her he wanted to “manhandle” her.
Arden fled in tears. She went to police the next day and filed a formal complaint a week later. Her report is one of the earliest documented allegations of sexual misconduct against Jeffrey Epstein. The Santa Monica Police Department did nothing with it.
The pattern was already established by then. The year before Arden’s assault, artist Maria Farmer had been working at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, sitting at the front desk and signing in visitors. She watched young women stream through the door daily. When she asked Ghislaine Maxwell about them, Maxwell explained they were auditioning models for Victoria’s Secret and the Limited Corporation. Maxwell would drive around Manhattan, sometimes with Farmer in the car, stopping to approach young women on the street. She called them “the nubiles.”
Farmer didn’t yet understand what she was witnessing. She would learn soon enough. In the summer of 1996, while staying as an artist-in-residence on Wexner’s Ohio property, Epstein and Maxwell arrived and sexually assaulted her. She barricaded herself in a room with furniture. Wexner’s security wouldn’t let her leave for twelve hours.
The Victoria’s Secret connection kept working as bait long after executives had flagged the problem. In 2004, a 21-year-old Italian model named Elisabetta Tai arrived in New York with big dreams. Her booker gave her an Upper East Side address and told her the man there was “in charge of Victoria’s Secret” and would change her life. When she walked into Epstein’s mansion, she saw five models milling around. She was so excited.
Then Epstein stripped naked, climbed onto a massage table, and handed her a vibrator.
Tai threw it at his head and ran. She told the New York Post she was too scared to report it, afraid someone would come after her or that she’d never work again. When Maxwell caught her trying to leave, she told Tai she couldn’t just go – this man was important, a friend of President Clinton.
This is what Leslie Wexner’s promise to “put a stop to it” actually looked like. More than a decade of women showing up for auditions that didn’t exist, for a job Epstein was never authorized to offer, at properties that served as staging grounds for assault.
A former Manhattan modeling agent later told the New York Post that Epstein “portrayed himself as the back door to get a girl into Victoria’s Secret.” Some of them got in, the agent said, through catalog shoots and media campaigns. Another modeling entrepreneur confirmed that Epstein and Maxwell were “a constant fixture” at Victoria’s Secret events.
Wexner’s lawyers have maintained that their client confronted Epstein in 1993 and forbade him from claiming any association with Victoria’s Secret. A card at the end of the Hulu documentary includes this statement. Epstein denied the allegations, they say, and was told never to do it again.
Maybe that conversation happened. Maybe Wexner believed Epstein’s denial. What we know for certain is that women kept showing up for fake auditions for years afterward. What we know is that executives at L Brands knew by the mid-1990s that something was wrong. What we know is that Maria Farmer was telling anyone who would listen – police, FBI, art world contacts – about the parade of young women being recruited under the Victoria’s Secret banner. The New York Times reported in 2019 that multiple L Brands executives said Wexner appeared to fail to act on accusations that Epstein was posing as a recruiter.
The brand wasn’t just cover for Epstein’s wealth. It was an active tool in his predation. Young women desperate to break into modeling believed they were meeting someone who could launch their careers. They put on their nicest outfits, assembled their portfolios, practiced their walks. They showed up at hotels and mansions ready to be professional.
Instead they met a sex trafficker wearing the borrowed credibility of America’s most famous lingerie company.
Wexner remained publicly supportive of Epstein for years after that 1993 conversation supposedly happened. In 2003, he told Vanity Fair that Epstein was “very smart with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards” and “always the most loyal friend.” This was the same year Palm Beach police were starting to receive tips about Epstein’s behavior with underage girls. The same year powerful men were still signing birthday cards for him.
L Brands eventually agreed to a $90 million settlement in 2021 to resolve shareholder lawsuits alleging the company fostered a culture of misogyny and failed to investigate Wexner’s ties to Epstein. No one admitted wrongdoing.
Alicia Arden still wants answers. She’s been calling for the release of Epstein files, represented by Gloria Allred, demanding to know why her 1997 complaint disappeared into a void. If the police had acted on her report, she’s asked, how many other women might have been spared?
The Victoria’s Secret scam worked because it sounded plausible. Because Epstein really did control Wexner’s fortune. Because he really did live in Wexner’s houses and use his private planes. Because the connection was real enough to be believed – just fake enough to be denied.
SOURCES
https://time.com/6197975/victorias-secret-angels-and-demons-hulu-true-story/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/victorias-secret-angels-and-demons-exposes-les-wexner-the-mysterious-billionaire-behind-jeffrey-epstein/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/billionaire-businessman-leslie-wexner-refuses-reveal-full-scope/story?id=68461262
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-maria-farmer-says-ghislaine-maxwell-threatened-her-life-after-assault-fbi-failed/
Police Handling of Model’s 1997 Sexual Battery Complaint Against Jeffrey Epstein Under the Microscope
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jeffrey-epstein-alicia-arden-victorias-secret-leslie-wexner-864095/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Farmer
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-epstein-accuser-urges-u-s-government-to-release-investigation-files