A few years into her time overseeing American Eagle\u2019s Aerie division, Jennifer Foyle felt the loungewear and intimate apparel brand needed to stake a flag in the ground to stand out in a crowded sector.<\/p>\n
It was 2014, at the twilight of Victoria\u2019s Secret\u2019s cultural dominance before a consumer backlash against unrealistic supermodel-led body standards had started to hurt the lingerie brand\u2019s sales. Aerie was ahead of its time among mass-market brands: It had leaned into body positivity before that became a mainstream term by offering larger sizes earlier than peers, and focusing on comfort and fit, rather than sexiness in service to the male gaze.<\/p>\n
Foyle, now president and executive creative director of AE and Aerie, decided to take it a step further: Aerie announced the \u201cAerie Real pledge\u201d to stop retouching photos of models, a pioneering stand in the apparel industry at the time. \u201cI said, \u2018This is it. This is our moment. We are going to be disruptive in the intimate apparel space,\u2019\u201d Foyle recalls in a recent interview with Fortune in an Aerie store in New York\u2019s SoHo. \u201cIt was a magical moment when it came to life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, Aerie launched a fresh campaign doubling down on that long-established policy of celebrating realistic beauty, with an ad mocking the limitations of AI. Featuring actor Pamela Anderson, known now as much for her no-makeup stance as for her time in the 1990\u2019s as a Baywatch star and tabloid celebrity, the ad juxtaposes the bland lifelessness of AI-generated models with the vivacity of real women, culminating in the slogan \u201cReal matters\u201d and a reiteration of the brand\u2019s pledge, with an addition: \u201cNo AI generated bodies or people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAerie Real was just celebrating women for who they are,\u201d says Foyle, \u201cand so now we are going to go to the next level with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Understanding the zeitgeist and what Aerie consumers really want, or might want, has long been one of Foyle\u2019s superpowers as a retailer and it has helped her build Aerie into a nearly $2 billion brand, one that has doubled in revenue size in just five years and which is now the engine of growth for its AEO parent company, despite still being a much smaller brand than American Eagle itself, which took in $3.4 billion in 2025. (Last quarter, comparable sales at Aerie rose 23%, but only 2% at American Eagle, which is competing in the hyper competitive denim market with tough rivals such as Gap<\/a> Inc, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Levi Strauss<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Now Foyle will have to tap that ethos to keep building Aerie at a time rivals like Victoria\u2019s Secret are finally recovering from past missteps<\/a> and new competitors are emerging. A merchant at heart, Foyle worked at Bloomingdale\u2019s early in her career. Long a veritable talent factory in the apparel world, she cut her teeth there alongside her now-rivals, the CEOs of Gap Inc, and Abercrombie & Fitch Co, Richard Dickson and Fran Horowitz.<\/p>\n Foyle still displays a love of the product, and an eye for a great piece. As she gives me a tour of the store, she gets particularly excited by a little flowy skirt she sees on the lower level. \u201cEveryone\u2019s been knocking this off since we launched it,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s so cute to work out or play in, I think we can have even more fun,\u201d she says, speaking a mile a minute.<\/p>\n Room to grow for Aerie<\/p>\n When Foyle joined AEO in 2010 to head Aerie, her mandate was to build what was then a $225 million sub-brand of American Eagle into a thriving stand-alone business.<\/p>\n So, Foyle has always been thinking about what categories could be the next big avenue of growth. In 2016, Aerie ventured into bralettes very successfully, followed by a foray into activewear with the Offline areas of its stores, selling activewear and athleisure. She got the idea for Offline a few years ago when she saw Aerie leggings doing very well. \u201cThe legging business that we had tucked inside of Aerie was $100 million and I thought, \u2018this could be its own business!\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd we launched Offline\u2026 It couldn\u2019t have been more perfect.\u201d When the pandemic hit in 2020, the \u201ccomfy-cozy\u201d positioning of the brand was perfectly timed as people stayed home in soft, stretchy clothing.<\/p>\n That part of Aerie\u2019s brand has grown into a $750-million-a-year business that Foyle wants to take much further\u2014and its growth explosion has coincided with the North American sales declines at Lululemon Athletica<\/a> and Gap Inc\u2019s Athleta<\/a>.<\/p>\n Foyle says there is no shortage of new products Aerie can get into, as long as they are consistent with Aerie\u2019s ethos. Take fleece, now a major category for Aerie. She became interested in the category when she saw a stylish young woman at an Ariana Grande concert in 2019 wearing an oversized fleeced top that went halfway down her leg. \u201cI thought, \u2018that looks great,\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cThere\u2019s a natural adjacency to just lounging and being at home, and we went for it.\u201d<\/p>\n It has helped that Aerie a decade ago developed \u201cReal Soft,\u201d an extremely soft fabric that is not heavy and holds up well after multiple washings. It was key to building Aerie\u2019s mammoth sleepwear business. And the Gen Z and Gen Alpha cohorts will mix pajama bottoms with hoodies when going out in public. Foyle says that Aerie\u2019s success stems from not only winning over 21-year-olds, but their moms too.<\/p>\n Many apparel chains strive to be fast followers and jump on the trend of the moment rather than get too far ahead of their shoppers. Foyle says Aerie and American Eagle should be stylish but not \u201ccrazy trendy\u201d\u2014but she still thinks the brand can make educated bets that push customers into new categories that they might not be clamoring for in focus groups. \u201cSometimes you don\u2019t need to ask permission. Sometimes the customer needs to be told, and you have to go for it. There was a white space for us in fleece.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHunt mode\u201d<\/p>\n