The Glossy Podcast

Pink wants to be the first stop on a Gen-Z shopper’s trip to the mall this holiday season. To get there, the Victoria’s Secret-owned brand is expanding beyond the pajamas, fleece and intimates it is best known for, using accessories, denim, beauty and collaborations to position itself as a broader lifestyle brand for 18- to 24-year-old women.

The strategy follows a period of renewed momentum. Pink delivered low-double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2026, supported by its core apparel and intimates businesses, improved regular-price selling, and new customer acquisition among 18- to 24-year-olds.

According to president Ali Dillon, the brand’s turnaround has been driven by a renewed focus on “clarity, customer and connection.”

“Today, Pink is evolving into a digitally native, socially driven lifestyle brand with a bold, playful and irreverent point of view,” Dillon said on the podcast. “Our product, our voice, our marketing — they’re all uniquely Pink.”

Dillon said Pink had previously lost sight of its core customer as the brand aged alongside its original shoppers. Now, it is specifically targeting 18- to 24-year-olds rather than broadly marketing to Gen Z, a generation that will continue to age out of that bracket.

Recent efforts have included working with K-pop group Twice around the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and Valentine’s Day, launching a festival campaign with “Love Island USA” star Gabby Mora, and opening a dedicated store in New York’s Soho neighborhood. According to Dillon, customers began lining up outside the Soho store at 1 a.m. on its opening day.

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show held last October was also an important catalyst. Dillon said some bras featured during the event sold out almost immediately, supported by TikTok videos showing customers running into stores to buy them.

“That moment of true brand health, of this feeling like, ‘I have to go get it right now,’ is definitely something that we’ve been really proud of,” she said.

Pink is now looking to carry that urgency into the holiday 2026 season. Rather than treating the season solely as a period for traditional gift exchanges, the brand is building around what Dillon described as “treat culture”: the tendency among younger shoppers to buy smaller gifts for themselves and their friends to mark everyday achievements.

“She’s not necessarily waiting for major milestones to celebrate,” Dillon said. “She’s creating these real reasons to celebrate all the time.”

The holiday assortment, spanning a range of price points, will include everything from accessories and beauty to fleece, sleepwear, bras and matching sets. Accessories are becoming particularly important as younger shoppers remain price-conscious, though Dillon said value is not simply a matter of offering cheaper products.

“Value isn’t just about price. It’s about feeling like what you’re buying is worth it, too,” she said.

One example is Pink’s Campus Tote, which generated approximately 115,000 backorders. Dillon said the bag initially took off organically after appearing in the background of social content, rather than through a major marketing campaign. Store employees soon began reporting that shoppers were repeatedly asking when it would be restocked.

The response has encouraged Pink to further expand accessories and personalization. Dillon said the brand remains interested in charms and other customizable elements across categories including intimates, swimwear, fleece and beauty.

“Our girl loves to personalize,” she said. “She loves to make something unique.”

Sleepwear will remain central to Pink’s holiday business, but the brand is increasingly presenting it as part of an all-day wardrobe. Dillon pointed to shoppers wearing pajama-inspired clothing from bed to brunch or the beach, allowing Pink to merchandise sleepwear alongside bras and casual apparel.

That cross-category approach was recently used for the Marshmallow bra, which the company launched last week alongside a modal sleepwear collection. Pink developed the bra after research found that 60% of women ages 18-24 wanted a more comfortable option.

Denim and beauty are also areas of expansion. Pink has tested trend-driven jeans, shorts, skirts and jackets, and Dillon said the company has “a lot of exciting things in the hopper” for beauty.

Collaborations will remain part of the strategy, but Dillon said they are intended to amplify Pink rather than define it. The brand’s first LoveShackFancy drop last November generated what she described as the strongest five minutes of sales in the history of Pink’s website, with shoppers gravitating toward established Pink products reworked through the collaboration.

Pink is also trying to build a healthier business by relying less heavily on discounts. Dillon described the approach as prioritizing “emotion over promotion,” while acknowledging that the company will still need to deliver competitive value during Black Friday this season.

By the end of the season, Pink will be looking at customer acquisition, regular-price demand, and whether holiday shoppers continue to engage with the brand into 2027.

“We often say, ‘Meet me at Pink,’” Dillon said, talking about where teens meet up in the mall. “Where are you meeting when you’re starting your shopping trip? We want her to go there first.”

On the Glossy Podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska are joined by Glossy editor-in-chief Jill Manoff to discuss the new rules of the denim market.

Denim is a perennially popular category, and there’s more diversity and competition in denim than ever. We talk about the trends that are dominant and the ways the denim customer is changing, plus we group together some of the current top brands to provide a better sense of how the sector is evolving.

Krissy Cela, the fitness influencer and founder of the activewear brand Oner Active, spent 10 years building up her expertise as a creator before finally launching her brand.

That time spent researching, getting to know the community, and building an audience has paid off. Just six years of the brand's existence, it has already reached nearly $200 million in annual revenue.

For this week's Glossy Podcast, Cela joined Glossy editor-in-chief Jill Manoff for a live recording from the stage of the Glossy E-Commerce Summit in Miami, where the discussion centered on how she's been able to scale up her brand so quickly.

Part of that comes from her knowledge of the community. Oner Active's ambassadors program opens for applications once a year and routinely gets around over 30,000 applicants.

“All of them are vetted, and then we send them a free set from the latest collection — no one else will have access to that collection," Cela said. "And in return, they’ll create content. I think we’ve created 16 million impressions across social when only gifting 100 sets,” she said, explaining the program’s high ROI. “The girl with the content that performs the best then becomes affiliated with the brand. [She can then

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding, we're living in a fashion world that's more globalized than ever. K-pop stars mix with American celebrities and European designers to form a diverse and international fashion consensus.

But there's still something ineffably unique about American fashion. From New England prep to country Western and urban hip-hop, there is no shortage of subcultures and aesthetics that originated in America and have become global phenomena.

On the Glossy Podcast this week, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and editor-in-chief Jill Manoff speak with Avery Trufelman, the journalist and host of the fashion and social history podcast Articles of Interest, about what American fashion truly is. We also break down which designers and brands today best emblematize what American fashion means today.

Trufelman said American fashion is defined by a chameleonic approach to style and reinvention. America has a long history of people reinventing themselves through fashion and aesthetics, from George W. Bush reinventing himself as a Texan rancher to Jay Gatsby adopting the fashions of New England to hide his background.

"There's this refrain that America is constantly learning to live up to the ideals that it set out for itself," Trufelman said. "This was pushed by waves of activism over the years. Black jazz musicians started wearing New England prep clothes in the 20th century, and it spread this message that anyone can dress that way. It's fulfilling this idealistic, not-quite-yet-lived experience of an equal society."

Trufelman said several major brands today are defining American fashion, from classics like Ralph Lauren to new designers like Emily Bode. But she specifically singled out Brooks Brothers as playing a pivotal role in defining what American fashion could be.

"Brooks Brothers is the oldest surviving clothing brand in the United States and really exemplifies everything about this country, good and bad," Trufelman said. Brooks Brothers has clothed every American president except two -- too fancy for Carter, not fancy enough for Reagan -- and helped popularize the very concept of a recognizable, mass fashion brand.

"America's gift to the world is brands," Trufelman said. "And Brooks Brothers was a big part of that. We invented mass-produced clothing, which is now such a big part of the fashion industry."