The Fall of an Abercrombie It Boy

mike jeffries
The best way to describe Jeffries is that he remained, for most of his career, “unchecked.” Photo: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
Lauren Sherman
October 24, 2024

While researching our book about the history of Victoria’s Secret, Selling Sexy, my co-author Chantal Fernandez and I obviously dug into the biography of its former owner, billionaire Les Wexner, one of the chief architects of the American mall. After creating The Limited in the 1960s, when he was still in his 20s, Wexner funded the ascendance of not only V.S. but also Express, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. During this era of corporate expansion, he was famously a bachelor, with only one known girlfriend, before he eventually started going with Abigail Koppel, formerly a lawyer at Davis Polk, in his mid-50s. The couple, who married in ’93, remain together to this day.