Victoria’s Secret lingerie challenged by Parade, a start-up selling underwear for all body shapes, founded by 24-year-old Cami Téllez
- Visiting a Victoria’s Secret store, with its images of supermodels, would leave Cami Téllez feeling inadequate
- A quick Facebook survey showed many women felt the same, and within a short time, inclusive underwear brand Parade was born
Cami Téllez never liked buying underwear, but maybe that’s why the 24-year-old is suited to take on Victoria’s Secret.
As a teen in Princeton, in the US state of New Jersey, her visits to the biggest retailer in women’s undergarments left her feeling inadequate, or worse. There were the images of supermodels in that faux boudoir setting cribbed from some male fantasy. And then came the products, like a push-up bra called the Bombshell that promised to add two cup sizes.
Victoria’s Secret “made me feel like I wasn’t enough”, said Téllez, a first-generation American whose family is from Colombia. “It wasn’t a brand for me or for people who looked like me.”
By the time Téllez entered her senior year at Columbia University in 2018, she’d had enough. In her eyes, Victoria’s Secret was still helping maintain a “cultural hegemony” over what’s supposed to be pretty, and that was hurting women. #MeToo was in full swing.
Others had to be sick of this, too, she thought. She aimed to find out by posting online polls in Facebook groups. Téllez got 10,000 respondents in two days and a definitive answer. No matter which part of America she asked, attitudes were the same: lots of women disliked buying underwear, too.
