New Hulu Series Explores Les Wexner’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein – RisePEI

Leslie H. Wexner, the Ohio billionaire who was as soon as one of many world’s vital artwork collectors, made his fortune on the mall by turning round faltering manufacturers into massively profitable behemoths like Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret and founding others just like the Restricted and Tub & Physique Works. However since 2019, when Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who was charged with intercourse trafficking of minors in Florida and New York and who had beforehand been Wexner’s cash supervisor, the mall mogul’s status and fortune have been on the decline.

Wexner’s relationship to Epstein is now explored in a brand new three-episode documentary sequence on Hulu, known as Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, that turned obtainable to stream on Thursday. Directed by Matt Tyrnauer, who was beforehand explored trend and intercourse scandals in sequence like Valentino: The Final Emperor (2008) and Scotty and the Secret Historical past of Hollywood (2017), the tantalizing new documentary charts Wexner’s rise and fall, and is the most recent documentary to take action, with Netflix having launched White Sizzling: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch earlier this 12 months.

In line with Angels and Demons, Epstein was recognized to connect himself to older, wealthier males as a method to safe funds and energy. Wexner ended up being a kind of males, entangling himself deeply with Epstein and going as far as to make Epstein his monetary supervisor and later giving him energy of lawyer.

That struck many in his circle, equivalent to former Victoria’s Secret CEO Cindy Fedus-Fields, as out of character contemplating that Wexner was a recognized micro-manager and that Epstein was a school dropout who had mysteriously leveraged a job at Bear Stearns after a quick stint as a math instructor at Dalton, the distinguished New York personal faculty. Serving as Wexner’s monetary supervisor from the ’80s till 2007, Epstein use his connection to Wexner’s corporations, most notably Victoria’s Secret, in an effort to proposition girls.

Angels and Demons focuses on one case particularly. In 1997, the actress Alicia Arden filed a police report after Epstein posed as a Victoria’s Secret recruiter. Epstein had invited Arden to audition for him in his lodge room, the place he proceeded, Arden alleges, to sexually assault her.

At the moment, senior executives at Victoria’s Secret had already complained to Wexner that Epstein had been posing as a Victoria’s Secret expertise scout to realize entry to younger girls. Regardless of promising to talk with Epstein about this habits, Wexner was both unwilling or unable to get him to cease, and the 2 continued to take care of an in depth monetary relationship for an additional decade.

Regardless of the present being marketed as a deep dive into Wexner and Epstein’s relationship, the sequence by no means actually will get at precisely why Wexner gave Epstein such unprecedented energy and entry to his fortune, paying him over $400 million through the years.

“That continues to be a giant query mark,” Tyrnauer admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week. “Regardless of the efforts of many nice journalists trying into this, together with Sarah Ellison, who’s within the movie, and writers from Vainness Honest and the New York Instances, it actually stays a thriller.” (Wexner declined to provide an interview for Angels and Demons.)

As a substitute, what the documentary focuses on is the extremely attention-grabbing however maybe not headline grabbing story of the rise of the Victoria’s Secret empire and the way it formed the fast-fashion trade and America’s understanding of attractive.

As a collector, Wexner didn’t give attention to a specific period or artist however purchased slightly little bit of the whole lot. He started his assortment in 1978 with Willem de Kooning’s Pink Girl (ca. 1944) and would go on to purchase works by Picasso, Giacometti, and Jean Dubuffet. His assortment was exhibited on the Wexner Heart for the Arts, to which he was a serious donor and which is known as after his father, in Columbus, Ohio, in 2014.

Although he at level amassed one in all nation’s high artwork collections, Angels and Demons additionally doesn’t cowl this. That’s maybe a evident omission provided that Epstein was additionally deeply entrenched within the artwork world.

From 1987 to 1994, Epstein was a board member of the New York Academy of Artwork and a famous donor of M.I.T’s media lab. He had robust relationships with artwork seller Leah Kleman, whose contact information is jotted down in Epstein’s “little black ebook,” which contained the names of dozens of high-profile folks, a few of whom have denied understanding Epstein, according to the New York Times.

One other vital connection was famous collector Leon Black, who has lengthy been a trustee of the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York. In line with the New York Post, Black allegedly tapped Epstein to direct the Leon Black Household Basis even after Epstein was arrested for intercourse trafficking fees again in 2008. The inspiration has since denied that they’d something to do with Epstein after 2007, citing his inclusion on paperwork after 2007 as a clerical error.

In a 2020 assertion, Black mentioned, ”Realizing all that I’ve discovered prior to now two years about Epstein’s reprehensible and despicable conduct, I deeply remorse having had any involvement with him. With the advantage of hindsight, working with him was a horrible mistake on my half.”