Amy Sedaris befriended Adam Selman when he was a costume designer on the Tennessee set of Dolly Parton’s 2007 Better Get to Livin' video. Sedaris found him in his hotel room listening to Blossoms and sewing sequins onto a green pompom skirt for her character.
“I thought, ‘This is my guy,’” she said. Back in New York, Selman was moonlighting as a handyman, and Sedaris hired him to build shelves, wallpaper her bathroom and change the knobs on her dresser.
One of his most important acts of service was introducing her to a minimiser bra.
“Because I’m a big-breasted girl, and I’m a small person, and I hate it,” Sedaris said. “I thank him for that every day.”
Knowing what women want to do with their boobs has turned out to be an enormous part of Selman’s professional life.
Last year, he took on the role of executive vice president and chief creative officer of Victoria’s Secret & Co.
The US intimate apparel institution counts 25 million active customers, and is forecasting upward of US$7.1bil (approximately RM29.02bil) in sales this year.
At the core of the enterprise are bras.
“It’s huge,” Selman, 44, said, referring not only to the size of the company’s business, but also to the scope of his work.
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In August, he led a dizzying tour through its offices in the financial district of Manhattan.
Mood boards galore mapped out his purview, from the images of bottles of Bare Nectar and Tease – two scents in the company’s roughly US$2bil (RM8.2bil) beauty portfolio – to the "season of strapless" campaign starring Angel Reese of the WNBA.
There was a social media strategy leftover from Valentine’s Day – Hailey Bieber painting her toenails in a dresser drawer in homage to a famous image of Gisele Bundchen from 2001.
PinkPantheress starred in a flared leggings shoot for Pink, the more youth-oriented label under the Victoria’s Secret umbrella.
Another section was filled with wall treatments, drawers and fixtures, part of the visual merchandising and store design for some 1,400 Victoria’s Secret stores worldwide. Selman oversees it all.
Around the corner, a private studio was cordoned off by curtains.
“This is just a little thing called the Victoria’s Secret fashion show,” Selman said, revealing a lingerie-filled control centre devoted to the cultural curiosity that is billed as the biggest fashion show in the world.
Last year’s had a viewership of 60 million. This year’s production is set for Oct 18 in Los Angeles.
In the lead-up, the company hopes to goose ratings and visibility with a new docuseries, Angels Among Us, which premiered Sept 27 on YouTube. Selman – along with Gigi Hadid, Paloma Elsesser, Alex Consani, Pat McGrath and Piergiorgio Del Moro – cast a new Victoria’s Secret “angel” from a mall tour of US cities.
She will be revealed on the Oct 18 runway.
Victoria’s Secret is back with a pep in its step, a big, bouncy blowout and a perky but comfortable bosom supported by its FlexFactor titanium alloy underwire technology.
Since Selman arrived, its share price has risen to around US$80 (RM327) from around US$18 (RM74).
He has been integral to the comeback mounted by the CEO, Hillary Super, who joined Victoria’s Secret in 2024 when it was rudderless in the cultural weeds.
By then, its Barbie body vision of sexy had been declared a dated patriarchal manifestation.
Reports of sexual harassment in the company loomed. Hanging over it all was the strange relationship between Leslie Wexner, the longtime head of its former parent company, and Jeffrey Epstein.
There was also increased competition and issues with product, distribution and discounting.
In response, Victoria’s Secret dismantled the fantasy, cancelling its fashion show in 2019, retiring the "angels" and introducing in 2021 the VS Collective, a group of athletes, activists and other ambassadors meant to represent a broader spectrum of women.
“There was a period of time where I think it was really cool to be a hater of Victoria’s Secret,” Super said.
The modest, self-flagellating Victoria’s Secret proved a downer on all levels.
By 2023, it was generating roughly US$600mil (RM2.5bil) less in annual sales than it had just two years earlier, while profits had fallen by approximately 80%.
Super was hired for a turnaround. But was putting the brand’s image and customer experience in the hands of yet another man really the answer?
Women who know Selman speak of a special quality he possesses.
Selman and Super met at Savage x Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie line, where he was chief design officer and Super was CEO.
She hired him because they shared a vision of what sexy means today.His signature look exudes low-key reliability.
Short brown hair and a thick mustache frame brown eyes with the innocence of a doe and the soulfulness of a hound. He wears classic workwear and denim, like a stylish handyman. His voice is a calm, steady baritone.
“I’m confident he could land a plane,” Sedaris said.
“He’s keeping the fun and the sexiness, but now with the safety,” said Elsesser, who has had a contract with Victoria’s Secret for five years.
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One of her early campaigns was a subdued shoot with models in everyday underwear for the VS Collective.
Last year, Selman had Elsesser, Candice Swanepoel, Dakota Moore-Lizotte and Devyn Garcia skipping through the streets of New York to a disco jingle that conjured the camp nostalgia of underwear campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.
The first thing Selman wanted to do on the job was laugh.
“If you said, ‘Close your eyes and think about Victoria’s Secret,’ does it bring a smile to your face?” he asked.
“If we’re having a great time and being earnest and sincere about the things that we’re putting out there, the customer will feel it, too.”
Ideally she is feeling the effects of Selman’s 80-20 female-to-male ratio for photographers, stylists, hair, makeup and set people, and models.
If they use a male photographer for one shoot, it’s a female photographer the next time. New names include Carlijn Jacobs and Miyako Bellizzi. A majority of Victoria’s Secret’s full-time staff members are women.
The idea is to make women want to be a part of it. “It needs to capture your attention, or else I’d be out of a job,” Selman said. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
