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Victoria's Secret - Angels And Demons 2022 Season 1 Episode 2
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00:00I don't know.
00:30the idea of sexuality and what was sexy during the 2000s was really a radical and fast change
00:45there was all this romance about the original muse victoria how smart educated and well raised
00:54that she was that projects normal kind of woman who likes to feel beautiful nothing sleazy and that
01:01was just not resonating anymore if it seems to you that every year the ads selling lingerie are
01:09getting more and more well shall we say revealing you'd be right in fact the people who sell lingerie
01:16and manufacture it say that the ads have always reflected the way women see themselves and the
01:21way society sees them go around a room in the room could be filled with female executives you said
01:33does everybody understand Victoria's Secret is about sexy and everybody says yes and then you
01:38say which sexy is it then you have a big debate about what is the essence of sexy as it relates
01:43to the Victoria's Secret brand that's where the Wexner story and the larger story of the culture cross it
01:52exploited things that were already going on in the culture it was the exploitation of sex to sell things
02:00in the late 90s president of the United States had an affair with an intern
02:11and I think there was a shift in the thinking of the American public how can a president facing
02:21embarrassing sexual allegations go up in the polls that some of this risky business might be more
02:29acceptable and less may have realized that and that is why he chose to drive the brand imaging into a
02:40sexier mode this was the image of the catalog tasteful classy covered up lingerie on the covers this was our big
02:50spring issue and less than Ed Rezek who was the leader of creative marketing came to my office because they wanted to see the cover
03:01options and the statement was they're not sexy enough when the angels appeared the English image went away here they are in 2000 in
03:14their bras and panties emerging from a spaceship Victoria's Secret introduces Angel 2000 at this point in time I realized that the original Victoria was dead she'd been killed off by angels in the spaceship by cabaret dancers
03:37the earth angels
03:42we moved into the more aggressively sexy point of view that's the leap the brand made
03:52this was the era of sex in the city sex was at the forefront of that show and at the forefront of female empowerment the brand you know grew from that same
04:06cultural movement of women taking back their sexuality owning their sexuality feeling empowered and I think that that was a big part of what drove the brand's success at that time
04:22obviously this was 20 years ago and the culture was very different
04:28absolutely like bang on you know the correct positioning and how they got to phase one of their next level of growth
04:37and that's how las and ed really position the brand
04:43are you from brazil
04:46from where
04:49are you from brazil yeah is there anyone left there
04:55ed rezek was like the hollywood arm of the business it was with the models and the runway shows
05:01and he had to deal with the commercials and marketing we work it constantly we work every aspect of this
05:09and none of it's accidental
05:13we did venn diagrams and graphs and we had a whole team that just would forecast what is sexy now
05:19it was like here's the plan here's the pathway and here's the data behind it you know we talk about
05:30things being data driven now this is 20 years ago it was very data driven
05:34from the research who built this machine that created the angels and built on supermodels and perfection
05:43and this unattainable sexy that was i want to be that so bad i'll just buy it
05:49it was embodied by the supermodels that were part of our brand
05:59i think several years ago supermodels were reluctant
06:02to do lingerie advertising of any kind and if you look around the room now
06:06i think you'll essentially see nothing but supermodels
06:08supermodels had almost gone to the next level and became these kind of celebrities they weren't
06:16even supermodels anymore that became something else i told my modeling agency to call victoria
06:22secret because they put girls on the map people all over the place all of a sudden would know who
06:30i am it made me kind of a household name
06:45i think that was a big shift where it became very desirable to work for the brand
06:51they invested in the models that worked for them they gave them the media training and they gave them
06:57the tools to be able to communicate what that brand message was
07:04they'd be traveling to the stores they'd be featured in all the campaigns
07:08they'd be working pretty much all year round for victoria's secret
07:14it wasn't just being an angel you represented fragrance you represented lingerie
07:18you represented all the things that models make the most money for doing
07:22those contracts were really lucrative in the millions of dollars we're professional girls
07:28we know how to act when the camera is on
07:36i think victoria's secret is like the most important i think that's what girls want to do
07:41when they turn to a model and come to america that's what they want to reach
07:44and totally like this thing here like all of us you know that's it couldn't be better
07:59creating a brand is making a movie
08:06it was very easy for me to make a movie in my mind i had that ability
08:10i do see myself as the studio head so it means i get to review the scripts make sure everybody stays
08:16on story you have to have an idea you have to bring all the creative talent together and i think
08:22that that translates directly to fashion brands
08:28we try to make all of our commercials feel like movies what distinguishes our commercials from most is
08:35that we put into them in aspiration and to do things that no one else would do
08:44we're out in the mojave desert in california shooting the holiday commercial with the legendary
08:49director michael bay i told them their commercials were too soft and uh so we kind of made a little
08:56harder edged sexier it's lingerie but you know michael bay is like doing explosions and pyrotechnics
09:05it's like mostly legs walking to you and it's dark and sultry and like he definitely set a mood
09:13that was part of the culture if you need to spend money to create what you're trying
09:19to create in this ambiance then you spend that money
09:22this is a business that's run by women uh the president's a woman all of the senior executives
09:45virtually all of the senior executives are women all of the stores are run by women this is a business
09:50meant to be designed for by and to women les waxner certainly hired some fantastic female executives
10:02and i don't think he hired them for winter dressing at all he was proud of their success
10:07success he took that success as his own when i was there i definitely felt like i was surrounded by a
10:15lot of great women leaders but if you get down to it the people who ran the company or who were the
10:20leaders or the head of the company it was les wexner and ed raising i can remember being in the uk
10:28the most popular single garment they sold was the thong as i go i said maybe we should sell thongs
10:35it's the ladies that were running victoria 6 that's really trashy i said let's try it and see
10:44our inspiration in the design house was femininity from a woman's point of view not femininity from a
10:50man's point of view we did boards on what's sexy now and we tried to affect him but that was always in
10:57direct opposition of how less saw sexy and in direct opposition on how ed saw sexy
11:07victoria's secret women's version ladies this is a show you just can't mix the fashions the
11:13fabric the color here on cbs men's version lots of beautiful women very little clothing
11:22time and time again we couldn't get past ed he had the power to shut down an idea and if less
11:32happened to be there less backed him there was a security between the two
11:39less wanted nothing to do with maternity he wanted nothing to do with shapewear he wanted nothing to do
11:44with comfort you know it was just like boom this woman shot out of a cannon that was born perfect and
11:52impossible to become and then made better by push-ups and padding
11:58so no matter what we did ed was going to make the decision on how our swimwear looked how our
12:04lingerie was shot and how how that projection of our brand looked
12:13bring me to my knees
12:21we were just following the bombshell unattainable single vision of how men see women and it was
12:41really frustrating to all of us internally at victoria's secret
12:48if there was a gap between fashion and soft core pornography what victoria's secret did was inch
12:57it closer and closer until it was almost touching
13:00i remember in the beginning less showed me a playboy magazine and he wanted to make the point
13:13that the models had perfect bodies and no freckles or moles i don't know if your camera's catching this but
13:25i'm loaded with freckles
13:29he was so adamant that i go after perfect women a la sexy girls next door that he actually
13:41made arrangements for me to fly to chicago and have lunch with christy hefner
13:58i would see all these victoria's secret advertisements i never noticed any advertisements
14:10for any other fashion brands so i think they definitely pushed it out to the public in a way
14:17that a lot of other companies weren't they took one fantasy and ran with it
14:22a lot of you were about nine or ten years old when we started putting this show on cbs
14:29and started watching it and thought and i'll bet thought to yourselves boy i hope someday i can do that
14:38i grew up
14:39i like women i like you know the drunk in the big bro
14:43with the wings on the catwalk in the catalog
14:46i like women in the world some of you learned how to walk in high heels
14:55watching the victoria's secret show over and over again for me fantasies are more effective when
15:04there's a diversity to them and a lot of the models look the same not a lot of different body types
15:14at the time uh not racially diverse it became clear to me that victoria's secret wasn't empowering
15:24women they used such a narrow idea of beauty in their marketing that it was doing the complete
15:30opposite is making women feel proudly about themselves women are at war with their bodies
15:35from grandmothers to teenagers studies show 60 to 80 percent of american women want to be thinner
15:42than they are young children are being affected by imagery every single day 89 of teenage girls
15:49feel the fashion industry pressures them to be skinnier nothing ever changes in terms of the people
15:54they put on the runway an average american woman is a side 14. plain and simple it's very frustrating
15:59sitting here watching definitely they've been a big part of creating an image that is almost
16:06unattainable it's not just victoria's secret but the whole modeling industry in general
16:15you have to watch what you eat very important
16:18i was even told when i was 123 pounds to lose 10 pounds and to go to 113 because at your height at
16:275 10 because i'm so curvy and they were like that's just too much
16:33i didn't have an eating disorder but i didn't eat very much for 10 years you became very self-aware
16:41having to live up to those ideals all the time
16:46i felt like i lost a part of myself in that world
16:52today people howl about the effects of instagram on young girls
16:56at the time victoria's secret was the analog version of the same thing
17:03traditional forms of media or pre-social media forms of marketing have been playing on our
17:09insecurities and making us feel poor making us feel fatter making us feel uglier
17:16it creates a tremendous kind of pressure on most women who actually can't look like this
17:22these are bodies that are just extremely thin but but also somehow curvy which is usually only
17:27attainable through extreme dieting and and fitness regimens and plastic surgery
17:34now you know how to dream like angel
17:42one of the biggest things that shocked me when i was behind the scenes working there
17:47was i didn't realize just how much retouching was happening
17:52it's an image that is retouched photoshopped changed that's literally impossible
18:00a lot of people think the modeling industry is very glamorous and it is in some ways but as you get
18:13more into it you realize that there are people who allowed a lot of bad things to happen
18:20from the very beginnings the modeling business has attracted
18:24men who wanted to exploit women even the so-called pure queen of the modeling business eileen ford
18:33would have parties at her house where she would introduce her models to wealthy friends her excuse
18:40was that she wanted to ensure that the models had a comfortable life after they stopped modeling
18:45therefore what they needed was rich husbands so there have always been these men hovering around
18:53looking for sexual rewards and financial rewards and the business has always allowed them to get away
19:01with but one man eileen ford does associate with in paris is this man the head of karen models one of the
19:08largest and most prestigious agencies in the country his name is jean-luc brunel here's the modeling agent
19:17from paris who had been exposed as a super creep in 1988 by 60 minutes he is acting as a matchmaker he's
19:28got the agency he's got the girls his friends say oh jean-luc i'd like to have you know i'd like to meet
19:33some girls or we're having a party tonight can you bring some girls and what happens if you say no you don't work
19:40he was abusive he exploited women particularly underage girls and he fled to new york and of course
19:48that's where jean-luc brunel met jeffrey epstein jeffrey gives jean-luc brunel a million dollars
19:56to start up mc squared which is a modeling agency that was based in south florida with
20:01satellite offices in tel aviv and in new york city brunel got the girls visas they were put
20:09up in one of epstein's apartments on east 66 street and that allowed epstein to legally bring
20:17girls from all over the world into the united states under the guise of modeling
20:23when you talk to the women who were abused by epstein galane maxwell his long-time girlfriend
20:33slash friend slash fixer was usually the first person they talked to and the person who took
20:40them to go see jeffrey so she was integral to his overall scheme they were in essence predatory bonnie and
20:50clyde these girls came to trust galene almost in a sisterly way where's a mother figure and instead
21:00she turned these girls over to jeffrey epstein was going to use whatever he needed in order to lure
21:08these girls and he does this of course for his pleasure and for the pleasure of others others who he
21:16intends to influence and manipulate in my reporting we talked to someone named william mooke who said
21:27that in 2005 there was a meeting with ed razik and jeffrey epstein at epstein's mansion and mooke said
21:37he remembers razik saying epstein's models are some of the best in the 90s late 90s i remember being on
21:48set and that people had mentioned this name and then at one point i think i was somewhere on a dinner
21:53and this girl said to me i'm asked to go and see jeffrey epstein and i go for victoria's secret like why
22:00that seems unreal so the epstein thing was rotating around it was um at the few times this happened
22:12it was definitely never victoria's secret who said to go see epstein he used victoria's secret as a
22:19calling card in the spring or summer of 93 it was reported to less that a man was going around new
22:31york city portraying himself as a recruiter for victoria's secret catalog models it was jeffrey epstein
22:41in the spring and less said he would stop it i don't believe the behavior stopped i believe it continued
23:11one woman said she met with epstein in a california hotel room believing she was interviewing for a job
23:20as a victoria's secret catalog model i was doing a lot of lingerie catalogs i'm coming off of baywatch
23:30i've been in playboy i'm auditioning for all these shows i have a vast portfolio and i thought the one
23:36thing that might be missing is to get in the victoria's secret catalog in 1997 jeffrey epstein had come
23:45out to california i had a meeting with him at shutters hotel in santa monica i want to be in the
23:56victoria's secret catalogue so i said okay i'll go in the hotel room
24:06i just came out of the um hotel for meeting jeffrey i called my friend multiple times
24:12i didn't expect that i had to be in a bra and underwear in front of him in the hotel room and
24:17he did give me a hundred dollars cash as well and by that time when he was touching my butt i felt
24:22like such a prostitute i put the hundred dollars back on the table and then he thought that i was
24:29like why are you and then i thought i should really go file a police report i don't know what
24:36this person just did to me he could be doing this to other girls did victoria's secret ever know that
24:51a police report was filed by her did they ever ask epstein about that did les wexner know about that
24:58why is the denial of a wealthy well-known man of more value than the serious allegation
25:09to law enforcement by one woman who happens to be a model
25:20apparently nothing changed and we also know that wexner continued to praise
25:27epstein even after this time wexner told vanity fair in 2003 that epstein was quote
25:35very smart with excellent judgment and high standards and he added he's always the most loyal friend
25:50jeffrey epstein clearly profited tremendously from his friendship with leslie wexner
25:56uh not only was there a power of attorney signed which gave him complete control over hundreds of
26:03millions of dollars there was also transference of money that allowed epstein to buy vast real estate
26:11holdings including the manhattan triplex the apartments on east 66th street the stanley new mexico ranch
26:20the avenue fauch apartment in paris epstein also got a great deal for wexner's company plane it's
26:31impossible to know exactly what he paid because the transaction was shrouded in so many shell companies
26:38when you hear something like a private jet was sold at below market value from the corporation to epstein
26:50this became the one that the media has nicknamed lolita express because epstein used it sometimes to
27:05traffic underage girls
27:07this is a culture of complicity many people down the hierarchy enable exploitation from the agent
27:23that represents the victim all the way to the top
27:37how is the company doing financially oh just great regarding the victoria's secret brand in the last
27:51quarter our sales increased 18 percent and our operating income increased 34 percent
28:05and our operating income increased 34 percent and our operating income increased 34 percent
28:08not only was the brand successful in sales
28:13but it reached so much further than just being a lingerie store
28:22merging fashion and entertainment the victoria's secret angels returned to hollywood to dazzle audiences
28:30with a televised fashion spectacular they are a cultural phenomena
28:43i think those years 11 12 13 were kind of like the years where things were really really golden
28:50and acknowledgements were coming in for the magnitude of the show
28:54no other lingerie brand could compete with victoria's secret
29:03les wexner was monomaniacally focused on accumulating money and power and money and power because money is
29:11power at the peak victoria's secret owned 40 to 45 percent of the entire market in the u.s this company is crushing it
29:20there was a moment in time where victoria's secret wasn't just a part of culture but they were actively
29:29creating the culture itself
29:41in the u.s this company is a part of culture in the u.s this company is a part of culture
29:54i have the privilege today to introduce a man who uh more than anyone in columbus needs no
29:59introduction ladies and gentlemen leslie wexner
30:02if you can picture columbus as it is and imagine a wonderful arena where the penitentiary site is a
30:13museum a cosi a place for public entertainment 75 80 acre park on a riverfront close to the downtown
30:21close to a convention facility how different would the city be growing up less wanted to be
30:27become part of the establishment in columbus he developed a plan for downtown columbus
30:37the city fathers just couldn't go along with it so instead he managed to buy a property in this small
30:46rural farm community east of town
30:48by the time it all came to pass he owned the place i continue to promise you i'm not moving to new
31:01york only a little new albany yes new york no
31:04if you are a jewish guy who grew up in columbus ohio which was not a particularly friendly place
31:18to jews you come into a lot of money it would only be natural to build the biggest most luxurious
31:27exclusive development possible near your hometown and make all of the goyim aware of exactly how wealthy
31:34you are and exactly the kinds of people that you are going to invite into your community new albany
31:40is a collection of stunning neighborhoods each with its own characteristics yet connected by a
31:45signature white horse fence and timeless georgian architecture
31:52he wants to create this sort of wonderland for himself that he can exert a measure of control over
32:04he dictated that the circumference of the trees would all be uniform
32:12the grass is better kept in new albany
32:19this is the idea of the world that ralph loren was selling
32:24it's a fantasy it's a marketing invention it doesn't exist it's an imaginary idea of what the wasp world was like
32:39wexner of course has the largest house in new albany it's an enormous estate sprawling with stables
32:46and what is effectively a guest house that house originally belongs to wexner's original partner
32:58in new albany jack kessler and jack kessler sells the house to jeffrey epstein for 3.5 million dollars
33:06in new albany jack kessler's house in new albany jack kessler was incredibly active in creating
33:21les wexner's financial portfolio he was a con man thinking about himself and putting himself in there
33:28to reap the dividends of this uh bizarre relationship wexner involved epstein very early on in the
33:38development of new albany epstein's name pops up as early as 1991 in all of the overlapping entities
33:45that were involved in developing new albany
33:52one senior executive said that he told wexner in no uncertain terms
33:57that epstein was a wolf and wexner just sat there and stared at him silently
34:05epstein would turn leslie wexner against individuals that he thought you know might be standing in his way
34:16and certainly there's no question in my mind that jeffrey epstein came between les wexner and his
34:22mother bella in the early 90s bella wexner falls ill and she resigns from the wexner foundation board
34:35jeffrey epstein takes her place and then later when she recovers she wants her seat back and what
34:43results is a protracted and difficult lawsuit that wexner himself could have resolved at any point
34:52he doesn't step in and he's clearly at odds with his mother over it
34:59there was always talk that there was something else going on with les wexner
35:05i remember there was a big story in new york magazine a cover story called the bachelor
35:12billionaire about wexner and it really caught your attention because here was this kind of
35:17elfin little guy surrounded by beautiful models but you came away from reading it thinking this guy's
35:26a real question mark he's kind of a cipher there's been a lot of theorizing about les's um sexual
35:40orientation uh but here's the thing the story goes les had a number of girlfriends and he was fairly
35:50serious apparently with a woman here in columbus unfortunately she was not jewish bella put her
35:59foot down and said my grandchildren are not going to have a shiksa for a mother and that was the end of that
36:11people love to gossip if a man or a woman is not married by a certain age you know people like to form
36:18opinions in the 80s and 90s fortune 500 company ceos were just simply not gay the very notion was
36:30incomprehensible wexner needed any rumor like that to go away
36:35and a few years later that's when abigail koppel entered the picture this beautiful brilliant young lawyer in new york
36:55she's not only jewish her father was one of the founding figures of the state of israel he came over and
37:03opened the el al israel israel airline office in new york wexner's embraced change in his personal
37:11life he married for the first time before the marriage jeffrey epstein made very clear to
37:20less that he would oversee the prenuptial agreement
37:24i remember abigail was pregnant and i was standing chatting with her at a party and she said she
37:40had found a nanny she wanted but the nanny wasn't inclined to accept the job and abigail said
37:49i'm gonna sick jeffrey on her he can work miracles and do this and he'll know
37:59no
38:02he put a classified ad in the columbus dispatch advertising for a nanny for a wealthy couple in
38:11new albany contact jeffrey epstein
38:20what it implied to me was that he may have managed the money but clearly
38:27epstein was deeply involved in the personal lives of abigail and les
38:34new albany becomes the location of some alleged crimes and it gets very close to the wexners both
38:48les and his wife
38:59maria farmer was a young art student living in new york she ended up meeting jeffrey epstein not long
39:05after she graduated in the summer of 1996. when i spoke to maria she told me that jeffrey epstein
39:16offered her the wonderful opportunity to spend the summer at wexner's estate
39:22where she's going to have great light and going to be able to paint
39:28when maria got to wexner's estate she was brought to the guest house which was
39:34and then owned by jeffrey epstein and was immediately greeted by security
39:39and found that her movements were really tightly controlled
39:42she was told that she couldn't go outside without getting explicit permission
39:49and she was told that there were guard dogs on the property
39:54maria farmer told me that one month into her stay jeffrey epstein and glane maxwell assaulted her
40:01what maria does in the aftermath of that is lock herself in her room and stack furniture against
40:11the door so that they can't get in she called 9-1-1 and was put on hold and eventually hung up on
40:19she then attempts to call the police and when she reaches the local authorities the voice on the other
40:26line says we're already there the police are actually guarding wexner's home and his gate and
40:36so she sort of lost all hope maria said she was held against her will for a period of 12 hours before
40:48she was allowed to leave the wexner property in new albany you would think that this would be in a
40:54security log that his security team would have informed les wexner what had taken place sheriff's
41:01department there in franklin county says that the records from that particular night are no longer held
41:07in the archive she eventually spoke to the fbi and we do know that those records exist
41:14yes when the course of reporting the story the wexner's were at first very reluctant to engage
41:23but what they told me eventually through a spokesman that epstein's house was just one of hundreds
41:31in a community developed by les wexner and what our reporting indicated was that it was in fact
41:38impossible to access epstein's property without going through wexner's gate
41:46maria presented me with her driver's license that she had that summer and at the bottom of that
41:53driver's license was the address one white barn road the home address of les and abigail wexner
42:00maria farmer has accused abigail wexner of acquiescence while epstein and galane maxwell
42:09sexually assaulted her in the new albany compound and effectively imprisoned her there and kept her
42:15under security guard what's so ironic is that abigail wexner was a champion of charities trying to protect
42:25younger women from domestic abuse people ask me you know what was did you have personal history or why
42:31would you choose to pick this issue and it's pretty simple you know the whole notion of women and children
42:37being abused in our own backyards is just not something i want to live with and so i chose to get involved
42:43if somebody has done something bad you know something corrupt uh taken advantage of their leadership position
42:55i will execute them publicly
43:13the industry overall is just exploding and now we're also um experiencing tremendous growth in the
43:20junior market as well that's really coming on strong the new young consumer in the early aughts wexner
43:27decided to expand his audience and marketed the new brand pink towards young girls i think les was
43:36pretty excited about pink and so it got a lot of attention he saw an opportunity and he he likes to
43:43exploit an opportunity one day they cleared the whole hosiery room out and they were just putting all
43:49this crazy bright colored cotton tiny panties and matching camisoles and sweatpants out and then the
43:57music went pop pink was created to complement this bombshell victoria's secret brand and it actually made
44:07them more relevant because cultural shift to that they were targeting that millennial generation
44:15ed razik would use the term fantasy for victoria's secret
44:22for pink the specific word that they used was fomo they wanted to create fomo they wanted people to
44:29have a fear of missing out that was the marketing strategy and it worked we would specifically have
44:39events that the goal was for people to post and take photos of so that they would be sharing on their
44:45social media that they had this incredible experience with the brand hank ensures the long-term
44:52growth of victoria's secret by bringing in a steady stream of young customers who we can hold for decades
44:58that was the one that didn't sit well with me
45:03you already had this brand that had standards that were unattainable to the everyday person
45:09and now you were trying to do things that would make girls feel worse about themselves
45:16standby sexy delicious this is the one with all the um sweeties adriana's the first one out
45:28oh my baby girls come with me come on
45:39i was wearing balloons they were not closed they were not sold in the stores
45:44i had this dress with toy things around and the whole set was pretty much based on toys
45:52i didn't even know who justin bieber was before i did that show my sister's children were so excited
45:58that i've been going on the runway with justin bieber
46:05they were so obsessed with him and they're like 10 and 12 at the time so i think definitely
46:11they hit the target it wasn't about the clothes as much as it was about the models fulfilling this
46:19idea of this fantasy that victoria's secret wanted to tell
46:22here we have the naughty policeman oh here we have the little school girl in her little kilt
46:34this little girl is wearing powder puffs oh and carrying a hula hoop the new york times called out barbie
46:44doll like bodies this little barbie is riding a tricycle i think that's what she might be doing there
46:54for me that's when i was felt like something was going the wrong direction i mean because pink
47:04was literally designed to target teenagers and tweens
47:08and so that did not feel good
47:31i think what happened for victoria's secret is like you have to up the ante every time you have
47:36to renew the branch or at one point as a whole it became a little too much
47:43and i think this is where the moment came where younger women were looking at that and saying this
47:49is not fair to me i don't feel comfortable looking at this
47:56with the advent of me too that's when the world shifted because all of a sudden word leaked that
48:01models were being assaulted by photographers that they were also being touched and grabbed in fittings
48:08and that other people in the victoria's secret uh organization were making comments or getting a
48:15little too handsy with the girls now they had this whole sexual harassment thing starting to brew over
48:23their heads new york times reportedly uncovered a slew of complaints against ed razik saying he acted
48:31inappropriately on several occasions other executives say they told leslie wexner about this but nothing
48:37was done they say i don't remember what we were talking about maybe there was some kind of me too
48:42thing happening in the news but ed's assistant made a comment she said if i had a dollar for every time
48:49a sexual harassment case came across my email i'd be rich and like ed laughed other people laughed and
48:56it was just like i felt really awkward but i also laughed and it was just like this very normal thing
49:01to make a joke like that
49:17there was a lot of things that were really not acceptable but the culture we were in then was
49:23very different and you kind of had to brush things off and almost take a blind eye to it
49:28in the industry and also the culture itself there are opportunities for people
49:35to do very bad things and so all we could do is to make sure that the talent feel comfortable to let
49:43us know if something bad happened to them and i could say sitting in this chair i've had very few
49:54models report to me um serious abuse but that doesn't mean it didn't happen that didn't mean it
50:05didn't happen no one would have ever said anything because they wouldn't want to stop the cash stream
50:13and the worst thing is you know years later you hear you know i hear from agents oh we all knew he did
50:18this and we all know she did that and we all but you know we just turned our heads because we made so
50:22much money i was kind of shattered myself to think like wow i can't believe like you knew you were sending
50:30models to these people and you know just hoping that something wouldn't happen
50:36it was really um the complicity was shocking
50:39in 2006 epstein's abuse of women particularly underage girls came to light he got caught there
50:54were two very small palm beach post articles that basically just stated the facts he was arrested
51:01his name his address and why he was arrested solicitation of prostitution period
51:10the relationship between wexner and epstein was was really pretty unknown publicly so wexner didn't
51:17have to answer for this relationship and continued to operate with epstein under the radar
51:24wexner removed his power of attorney but this didn't occur until december 2007 more than a year later
51:39wexner is the ceo of a publicly traded company and his closest advisor has been arrested on really lurid charges
51:48and you have to wonder why the delay in severing ties in my reporting the only way i could get to
51:57the bottom of it was to try to talk to people who knew wexner well and all they could do was say that
52:03epstein had to have some kind of hold over wexner
52:09the end result was a lot of nothing it was a slap on the wrist after 18 months in the palm beach detention
52:16facility epstein will serve another 12 months house arrest at his palm beach home an arrangement
52:21enjoyed by how many other convicted sex offenders he had in his tent some of the wealthiest men in
52:31the world included a member of the royal family and prince andrew that he was able to acquire through
52:38his relationship with gallaine maxwell there was also two u.s presidents bill clinton and donald trump
52:47in a 2002 magazine article trump called epstein a terrific guy adding it is even said he likes
52:53beautiful women as much as i do and many of them are on the younger side nobody paid much attention to
53:02the florida conviction there's some brief headlines and then it goes away jeffrey epstein continued his
53:09lifestyle and pretty much said after the florida conviction this was nothing worse than stealing a bagel
53:18they were business associates at the very least friends probably additionally for over 20 years
53:32years it's a long time not to become aware that someone's behavior is not what it should be
53:47there are times when i think i've made decisions that i'm not proud of
53:51in hindsight but i don't think i've made a decision consciously in the moment where i said if
53:59you know if this were on the front page of the newspaper would i be embarrassed
54:04and i think that uh you know in in a tough business world or a tough world i think you can make
54:11decisions that are tough but that have moral integrity now that moral integrity encompass
54:19your your moral integrity your ethical moral compass has a lot of judgments
54:24my experience in reporting on other moguls and billionaires they're all secretive to some degree they
54:38all want some level of privacy but wexner is one of the most it begs the question why when there are
54:47questions that he would do well to answer that he has avoided entirely
54:55all the work that he put into building this fortune and this business and these brands
55:04there's a cloud over all of it now
55:07les wexner is in some hot water a civil complaint has been filed against wexner the founder of l brand
55:15victoria's secret founder les wexner in the headlines again being sued by one of the
55:20shareholders of the company he founded some see the l brand image tarnished following scrutiny
55:27over wexner's relationship with the late financier jeffrey epstein an investigation is underway in paris
55:34after a close associate of jeffrey epstein modeling agent jean-luc brunel was found dead this morning in
55:40his prison cell this is astounding to hear considering the fact that he died exactly the same way jeffrey epstein did
55:57so
56:02so
56:06so
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