Content warning: This article contains mentions of sexual assault and rape.
Abercrombie & Fitch. Bath & Body Works. Justice. PINK. All of these brands should be familiar to those who grew up in the 2000s and early 2010s. These were the pillars of every hometown mall, the mecca for any young girl who wanted to stay on top of fashion and ease her way into looking like the woman she sought to become. Even in her younger years, when it felt like her parents controlled everything, she could visit these stores and experience her first taste of independence.
Unfortunately, this was all a facade.
It’s no secret that Leslie Wexner, co-founder of Bath & Body Works and owner of Victoria’s Secret, Justice and Abercrombie & Fitch, was a client of Jeffrey Epstein. Wexner gave Epstein power of attorney over his companies and eventually stepped down from Victoria’s Secret in 2021 over backlash against their very public friendship.
It’s also not a secret that Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling scout for Nordstrom, Macy’s and JCPenney who died in prison before trial on charges of rape, allowed Epstein to be the co-runner of his agency, MC2 Model Management. This partnership provided Epstein a front-row seat to the selection process for models who would serve as the faces of prominent storefronts.
But these connections were not known to the public as they walked through the mall 20 years ago. Back then, brands weren’t seen as corporate entities; they were seen as marks of identity, a means of appearing tapped into pop culture. This was especially evident in the logomania trend of the 2000s, where logos were seen as the pinnacle of cool (Juicy Couture jeans, anyone?). In the words of a retrospective blog post by American clothing company IF … THEN WELL: “You didn’t just wear a logo. You lived it.”
This philosophy is troubling in hindsight — now we know how “you lived it” was determined by old male billionaires implicated in some of the worst sex crimes in modern memory. But there were warning signs, especially in the environment these three men fostered in their companies.
In 1992, Wexner hired Mike Jeffries to be the CEO of Abercrombie. During his time as CEO, Jeffries sexualized and exploited young male models in ad campaigns and sold thongs with suggestive phrases like “wink wink” to elementary school-aged girls. He refused to make clothes for plus-size customers, sold racially insensitive T-shirts and maintained discriminatory hiring policies against people of Color at Abercrombie stores. As a result of mounting backlash, Jeffries resigned in 2014.
In 2024, he was arrested on allegations of sex trafficking of minors. Given that Jeffries held so much corporate power for roughly 22 years, he was likely protected by both his own wealth and figures such as Wexner and Epstein.
In a similar vein, PINK’s controversial 2013 “Bright Young Things” marketing campaign featured lingerie with bedazzled phrases like “Feeling Lucky” and “Call Me,” sparking outrage among parents who felt that its childish design made the line more enticing to middle schoolers than the college audience it claimed to be for. PINK doubled down.
“Despite rumors, we have no plans to introduce a collection for younger women,” the company wrote. “‘Bright Young Things’ was a slogan used in conjunction with the college spring break tradition.”
For the record, I don’t believe PINK’s corporate statement for a second. When I was in middle school, I fully thought these clothes were intended for me. So did my family and friends.
In middle school, the mall was the only place where I could go to hang out with my friends since we were too young to drive. We’d be dropped off by one of our moms in a minivan, and upon entering the tacky glass palace, our afternoon would begin somewhere between the 1980s tiling and the broken radio attempting to play a Katy Perry song.
Conveniently close to the entrance, on a corner between a jewelry store and an Auntie Anne’s, was PINK. PINK is a subsidiary of Victoria’s Secret that, despite claiming to be a store for college students, very clearly makes clothes that cater toward preteen and teen girls. Think lots of glitter, warm fairy lights and pink-and-white polka dots — much like a little girl’s bedroom. If you were just window shopping, it seemed innocuous enough. Athletic jackets and gray sweatpants made it appear like just another store where you could buy practical clothes with a feminine edge. They even had a big plushy dog that was admittedly very adorable and made the store seem inviting to middle school girls like me.
But once you entered the store, the atmosphere changed.
Suddenly, we were surrounded by booty shorts with the word “PINK” written across the butt and lacy thongs marketed for “the perfect date.” They didn’t call underwear “underwear”; they became “panties” labeled from “cheeky” to “cheekiest.” They weren’t separated by age range either, making it difficult for us to figure out which items were for tweens or grown women.
We truly assumed PINK was a kid’s store, especially since it was physically connected to the adult Victoria’s Secret store, creating the illusion of separation. One wrong turn into a side hallway and you’d suddenly be in a dimly-lit room filled with actual adult lingerie and sexual paraphernalia. Once you realized where you were, you’d turn back to the part of the store that felt intended for you, the “kids’ section” of the complex.
Of course, this isn’t a shock design-wise. Victoria’s Secret owns PINK, so on paper, it makes sense that the stores would be in the same area of the mall. But in retrospect, it was pretty concerning that an 11-year-old could enter an adult environment so easily, both in and out of the supposed safe space that PINK promised to provide.
This experience isn’t just something from my memory, either. Take a look at this 2013 catalog featuring very young-looking models wearing tank tops with the sides removed and pulling down the very sweatpants they’re modeling. Or this Reddit slideshow of memorable PINK attire, featuring neon underwear that reads “I WANT CANDY,” a teen model suggestively showcasing a yoga bralette on a bed rather than on a mat and, of course, the “cheeky” campaign slogan I mentioned earlier.
While the clothing types and phrases are geared toward a mature audience, the aesthetic choices certainly are not. The bright colors, reliance on shimmery patterns and excessively cutesy fonts align with what preteen girls would choose to wear, not the mature color palettes typical of young adult women. This odd dissonance created an environment that was sweet on the surface but truly sick once you thought about it for long enough. The intention of PINK being a “college brand” no longer matters — the babyish designs made us all think otherwise.
Suddenly, the parental concern I remember all of us shrugging off when we were younger doesn’t seem so out of place. At the time, it felt like our parents were overreacting to our journey toward independence; they were getting in the way of us finding our own original styles and, by proxy, our inner selves. But as I reexamine these spaces with the knowledge that they were crafted by Epstein, Wexner and Brunel, marketed toward the target demographic for their sex crimes, I realize that the sinister undertones were never just imagined by helicopter moms. They were real. And they played a major role in establishing our ideas of what beauty looked like: To be beautiful was to be razor-thin, white, hyperfeminine and smoothly half-naked.
Millennials in particular have taken to the internet to share and connect with others over their collective shock at the dark realities of the brands that used to define them.
Instagram user Ileana Justine stated: “We didn’t know it at the time, but (Epstein) and his pedophile friends had a finger on all of our decisions. The clothing we wore, the scents we put on our skins, the stores we shopped at, our body image, our insecurities. It’s not just that the people we held up as heroes — princes, presidents, Hollywood stars — turned out to be villains. It’s that the power they wielded over society impacted all of us.”
Linked in her video is a Thread from journalist Stephanie McNeal, who wrote: “When I was 9, all I wanted were clothes from Limited Too. When I was 12, all I wanted was glitter lotion from Bath and Body Works. When I was 16, all I wanted was bras from Victoria’s Secret and shorts from Pink. All these brands were owned by alleged Epstein conspirator Lex Wexner during the height of his crimes. Realizing how much of our millennial girlhood was tied to unspeakable acts on girls just like us is a particularly brutal gut punch.”
Of course, stores commercializing this “ideal” didn’t start with the era of Epstein; These establishments have always played a role in objectifying minors. Take the 1970s tween perfume line Baby Soft (whose slogan was “Because innocence is sexier than you think”) or Calvin Klein using 15-year-old Brooke Shields in a sexually charged ad campaign for jeans in 1980.
But now, Epstein’s connections are the most recent and most high-profile examples of how malicious men shaped beauty standards for a generation of young people. These revelations have generated conversation surrounding the problematic foundations of fashion brands geared toward children. The Wexner monopoly made the clothes, the Brunel monopoly put the clothes on the girls he would soon be accused of violating and all of it happened under the watchful eye and bank account of Jeffery Epstein. Through their chokehold on children’s fashion, these men imposed their depravity not only on the underage girls trapped alongside them, but on the girls who saw themselves in the clothes, believing them to be the pathway to adulthood when, in reality, they were telling her that all she was worth was her body.
Today, these stores brand themselves as sites of female empowerment, championing autonomy, inclusivity and personality — all good things, no doubt. The clothes have changed too, opting for cool-toned, minimalistic patterns, sleek cartoonish designs and (thankfully) no more overt sexual messaging aimed at little girls. But no amount of rebranding can undo the damage that has been done to the millions of women who had these impossible standards ingrained in them at such a vulnerable age and who continue to wrestle with these standards today. The little girls comparing themselves to the models in the back-to-school PINK catalog have grown up to be targeted by “miracle drug” brands like Ozempic to stay thin. They have been told to tap into their “feminine energy” by staying at home rather than seeking a career, and they must confront the fact that plus-size clothing is disappearing altogether from many stores. Combine that with the constant surveillance of social media and the uptick in misogynist thought among Generation Z men, and it’s clear that the age of Epstein is far from over. But one thing is certain: We need to hold brands accountable for the image they project, the investments they make and the people they hire. Then, and only then, can we prevent the grooming of another generation.
Daily Arts Writer Isabella Casagranda can be reached at ijcasa@umich.edu.