Leslie Wexner Quotes

103 Leslie Wexner Quotes (Limited Brands, Victoria’s Secret, The Limited Quotes, Abercrombie and Fitch, Les Wexner)

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Narcissism, sex, and beauty are real whether it be Cleopatra or Angelina Jolie.
Leslie Wexner

Guys are rational and cheap. Women are willing to spend on becoming more beautiful, even in a recession.
Leslie Wexner

[On buying ‘Victoria’s Secret for $1 million in 1982.] It was a business on a g-string.
Leslie Wexner

We are never, never, never satisfied when the results are terrific.
Leslie Wexner

I like to believe trees can grow to the sky.
Leslie Wexner

[In 1985 on promising good results but then having to deliver.] It’s good to be a prima donna, but tomorrow you have to sing.
Leslie Wexner

You can’t just sell to women like they are men wearing skirts.
Leslie Wexner

Success doesn’t beget success. Success begets failure because the more that you know a thing works, the less likely you are to think that it won’t work. When you’ve had a long string of victories, it’s harder to foresee your own vulnerabilities.
Leslie Wexner

[On not trying to build his business.] The punishment would have been never to be able to try.
Leslie Wexner

I don’t want to be blocked from trying my ideas, from being creative.
Leslie Wexner



I am difficult to read. I look and smile and do not tell you what I think.
Leslie Wexner

I’m like the Chinese. They just sip their tea and look at you.
Leslie Wexner

You have to understand why fashion is sexy.
Leslie Wexner

Everyone in the business has to work together as a team.
Leslie Wexner

I don’t believe bigger is better, I believe better is better. Period.
Leslie Wexner

One of the major reasons for our success is that we believe in the taste and good sense of the consumer. Nothing is more annoying to me than hearing a buyer say, ‘I like it, but the customer won’t.’
Leslie Wexner

My idea was to be a specialist, not a generalist. The world values specialists, not generalists.
Leslie Wexner

I wanted… to really stand for something and own it.
Leslie Wexner

The world is a sexy place. It’s primal.
Leslie Wexner

Keep your mental muscle loose. You have to keep stretching.
Leslie Wexner



We’ve embarked on systematic change that will never end.
Leslie Wexner

[In 1985 on his widowed mother Bella Wexner (He gave 10% of the Limited to his mother)] This is a woman who was buying dresses 22 years ago and now has a personal net worth of over $100 million.
Leslie Wexner

These things are stupid.
Leslie Wexner

[In 1985 tongue in check on his industry] Dumb business like selling clothes.
Leslie Wexner

Carter Hawley Hale war.
Leslie Wexner

To answer your previous question about when the stock will split… it is now. [‘Whoooooo.’ Go 600 people.]
Leslie Wexner

Now we’ve got to do it.
Leslie Wexner

I have all these ideas, and I’m frustrated because I can’t do them all.
Leslie Wexner

I hate to think of myself as an adult, because when you do, you die.
Leslie Wexner

[On his favorite word for his executives] Focused.
Leslie Wexner



[In 1985] I got great pleasure, almost sensual pleasure, from our attempt to merge with Carter Hawley Hale. The punishment would have been never to be able to try. Everyone says I must be doing this for the power or the money. Not at all. I don’t want to be blocked from trying my ideas, from being creative.
Leslie Wexner

Whether Land of Polaroid, or Ford, or Watson – they all had a concept that fascinated them. In 1965, I was sure imported clothes would be important, so I started going to Europe once a month and then the Orient and acquiring the factories. [In 1978 and 1979 he opened three joint venture Chinese factories in China..]
Leslie Wexner

I never knew anyone who made $15,000 a year. My parents worked 70 hours a week, and both never made $10,000.
Leslie Wexner

I thought that it would improve business if we only sold sportswear, because it was the only profitable thing. If you make money in chocolate ice cream, why sell other flavors? [His father disagreed so he went out and started ‘The Limited’.]
Leslie Wexner

[His father taught him.] His [store] lease could always be canceled.
Leslie Wexner

[On buying Lerner’s from Meshulam Riklis the head of Rapid-American] I was difficult for him to do business with. Lyman Brownfield [a Columbus lawyer who was Richard Nixon’s law-school roommate] said I have ‘an Oriental mind.’ Riklis has one, too, but his is from a different part of the Orient. Mine is Chinese, his is Turkish. I am difficult to read. I look and smile and do not tell you what I think. People say, ‘Don’t you ever talk?’ but I’m like the Chinese. They just sip their tea and look at you. Riklis was two hours late for the first meeting. He said he’d been furniture shopping with Pia Zadora, but I knew. I’ve bought a few ‘rugs’ before. The later he was, the more patient I was. The less he talked about business, the more I knew what he wanted.
Leslie Wexner

It’s a mentality, like Carl Rosen at Puritan. I was at a meeting in his office to buy Calvin Klein Jeans, and he was an hour late. After fifteen minutes, I was stewed. No one could be so late without calling, and then we went into the boardroom and the waitress served Rosen an entire lunch and no one even asked me if I wanted coffee. No one could be so bizarre and so rude unless there was something he really wanted.
Leslie Wexner

[In 1985 at the age of 48.] A lot of people think because I am not married I am asexual or homosexual, but I enjoy a relationship with a woman.
Leslie Wexner

[On being told by Alfred Taubman that he should get married.] Me and the pope.
Leslie Wexner

I would have been an architect. But no, if I had it to live all over again. I would be me. Not Felix [Rohatyn]. Not Alfred [Taubman].
Leslie Wexner



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