Victoria's Secret: Part 1 of.....?

Looking back, the 90s were a crazy time. While the internet was technically a thing, in reality, pre-online life gasping out its last few breaths. In general, convenience meant a whole different thing than anyone would consider it today. Information wasn't constantly at one's fingertips. We needed maps to navigate. We often needed libraries for even the most basic research and information. News was delivered to your house in paper form in the morning or digested from the local TV station either around the dinner table or later that night in the living room. Music came in the forms of CDs (or cassettes). Movies often meant renting a tape to play on a device at home.

Perhaps, though, nothing was more different than shopping. In the first half of the decade, we hadn't yet been introduced to a little bookstore called "amazon". We certainly weren't paying for next day delivery of goods or having groceries sent to our house. What is a simple as a couple of thumb taps on your phone (wait...what's a thump tap on your phone?) now often involved some prior planning, and lots of free time. 

While convenience now means getting your holiday shopping done from your couch in your pajamas the morning after Thanksgiving, convenience then meant...malls. And oh were there malls. Malls obviously still exist although they are definitely evolving, often moving outdoors, sometimes including multi-purpose uses such as apartments or office space, also incorporating mid to high-end dining options that replaced food courts with huge varieties of fast-food options. The 90s were indeed the golden age of indoor malls, often multi levels, always full of retail stores, rarely with a vacant storefront.

While lingerie is constantly evolving, one of its more earth-moving evolutions took place during this era, and it was thanks to one store. Depending on where you lived, lingerie shopping usually meant large department stores, where you might add some foundation garments to some of the other clothing (or houseware) items you were buying. Lingerie could still be sexy, but the era of vintage multi-layer pieces that often connected to stockings was over, and often function over style won the day. I remember walking through "Filene's" and often making an excuse to walk by the lingerie section of the store, but never being brave enough to walk through it. 

About this time a three story mall opened a short bus ride from my house. Not being old enough to drive anywhere yet, but having free time in the afternoon made this the destination for my friends and me on many afternoons. Having never been to a mall so huge, our first time there we were met by a quite a few shops that we had never heard of before. We walked around just to take it all in.

This was when we saw it. Victoria's Secret. Not much like it is today, it was designed to mimic a Victorian era building, with a fake stone look and columns, which divided the windows and doors. In the windows there was, simply, women's underwear, but not like any we had ever seen. Satins, silks, and laces made up the garments on the mannequins. Garters, hooked up to stockings adorned many of them. The inside of the store popped with bright pink colors with stripes and hearts. From outside you could hear the classical music pouring out.

My friends stopped and smiled at each other. The lingerie was, quite simply, sexy. It reminded us of what might be worn by pinup models in some of the glimpses inside adult magazines we had seen at that point. We exchanged a knowing look, but didn't linger outside for too long, as if it might say something about us if we were caught outside. We all moved on, and so did I, at least physically. My mind stayed there thinking about all of the frilly things in the window and what I could see hanging on the wall and stacked on the tables inside. I had to figure out a way inside. But how?