Edward G. Razek is an American businessperson known for his former role as the Chief Marketing Officer for L Brands where he developed the Victoria's Secret Angels and the company's annual fashion show. Razek joined L Brands in 1983 and resigned 2019 after persistent public criticism for creating a culture of misogyny and harassment.
Razek worked in advertising for several years at Shelly Berman Communicators in Columbus, Ohio. He was a partner with Shelly Berman and Bill Wickham at the agency. Among his early clients at Shelly Berman Comunicators was the clothing retailerLes Wexner of The Limited, Inc.. In 1983, Razek left SBC and joined in-house branding operations at the Limited. In 1994, Wexner tasked Razek with developing a fashion show for one of the companies brands. The first fashion show took place in 1995 with the chosen brand, Victoria’s Secret. A somewhat modest affair for a risqué product at first, the fashion show, under Razek, transformed into spectacle and became an entertainment event, with peak viewership in 2001. Razek was instrumental in selecting the brand’s models, known as "Angels" and bestowed with angel wings, and in creating the company’s TV ads. It later emerged that Razek was the subject of repeated complaints to the human resources department regarding inappropriate behavior, but he continued to operate with impunity for many years. Following a November 2018 interview with Vogue, Razek received strong and sustained criticism for his anachronistic marketing after he expressed an aversion to casting transgender and plus-sized models in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. In an era of MeToo and body positivity the backlash was severe, with calls for Razek to step down. Victoria’s Secret was also bowing under the weight of Wexner’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein, following his arrest in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking. It emerged that Epstein used his connections to Wexner and Victoria's Secret, to prey on young women by posing as a recruiter. Executives had warned Wexner about this in the 1990s, but no action was taken. The business problems at Victoria’s Secret soon escalated into a public crisis. In 2019, an activist shareholder, CEO James A. Mitarotonda of Barington Capital Group, criticized Razek and pressured L Brands in an open letter to update the brand image and switch up the predominantly male board of directors at the company. In response to the backlash against Razek, the company hired its first openly transgender model, Valentina Sampaio, in August 2019. Razek later apologized on social media and, in August 2019, he stepped down. In November 2019, the annual fashion show was officially canceled after running for over two decades of production. In 2020, The New York Times reported that Razek "presided over an entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying, and harassment". Interviews with more than 30 current and former executives, employees, contractors and models alleged that Wexner and Razek played prominent roles in cultivating the toxic environment.
