Goldy Gopher’s lingerie values make U of M feel good all under

The University of Minnesota has beat a quick retreat on a line of Victoria’s Secret apparel bearing institutional logos including U of M mascot Goldy Gopher. Spokesfolks invoked "values" and "image" among the reasons for yanking a fairly tame collection of mostly sweatsuit-grade togs that are already on sale online and were due to hit Victoria’s Secret shops this summer.

Brady Averill, then a student-reporter (and later the Star Tribune’s intern/functioning bureau chief in Washington, D.C.) sounded an early alarm on Victoria’s Secret campus marketing strategy four years ago in the Minnesota Daily. But selling off its student body’s brand loyalty clearly wasn’t the problem for the U—which, after all, broke new ground by selling TCF Bank stadium naming rights and favored campus bank status. 

The U sniffed at the idea of Victoria’s Secret’s selling U of M undies as part of the its Pink Collegiate collection, but the university’s own athletic department Web store sells slinky U of M camisoles. The "values" and "image" red flags raised by unnamed "key people" at the U will need to be fleshed out to seem like more than a CYA strategy.

Here’s one factor that may have entered the U’s camisole-hawking, panty-abhoring brain trust’s thinking: With Victoria’s Secret out of the picture, the U will have one fewer line of branded apparel to worry about next year, when, as many expect, a new administration in Washington, D.C., green-lights a multicampus program for imposing Fair Trade requirements on manufacturers of collegiate clothing.

The U of M was a founding member nearly a decade ago in the Workers Rights Consortium (a partnership of higher-ed institutions egged on by student protesters), which has grappled with the role of offshore sweatshop labor in producing shoes and clothes for college shops and sports teams. The WRC’s latest initiative is a Designated Supplier Program that would impose Fair Trade-type rules on buying garments that originate overseas.

Last year the U inked a deal with Nike valued at nearly $9 million for branded apparel and varsity sportswear. Nike’s labor practices will come under close scrutiny—as would have Victoria’s Secret’s—when the WRC’s Designated Supplier Program goes into effect. That’s expected to happen next year, when the Bush administration no longer runs the U. S. Department of Justice, whose anti-trust division objected to the Designated Supplier Program. A new administration, even Republican, will likely lift that objection.  

At lower right, items from Victoria’s Secret Pink Collegiate U of M line. Others are items for the U of M athletic department’s online store.