She is Nancy Kramer, chief executive at Resource Marketing, which is best known for an innovative Webcast fashion show for the Victoria's Secret lingerie chain.

The lingerie chain is part of Intimate Brands Inc., which is 83 percent owned by the Limited Inc.

While Victoria's Secret is still virtually the only national lingerie chain, department stores and mom-and-pop shops are now using its formula.

In March 2011 Paphitis set up a new lingerie chain, Boux Avenue.

What about your two stores: Aerie, which is a lingerie chain, and Martin & Osa, designed for more mature men and women.

Elsewhere lingerie chain La Senza, Millets-owned Blacks and gift shop Past Times all teeter on the brink of insolvency.

By the early 1990s Victoria's Secret faced a gap in management that led to the "once hot lingerie chain" to be "plagued by persistent quality problems".

Like other retailers, Victoria's Secret is coy about how much money it makes from CD sales, though the lingerie chain said that the sideline makes a profit.

And it has closed Cacique, a small lingerie chain.

Frederick Mellinger, the founder of the Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie chain, died of pneumonia Saturday.