Victoria's Secret is back. Of course, the announcement that the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was returning after a six-year hiatus made sense. After all, aren’t we all ravenous for the past? In some ways always, but particularly in the last few years, we’ve seen a nostalgia renaissance, a means to coddle our fragile minds from the current day as we long for what now feels like a simpler time.
Though I love a good dose of nostalgia, there are some things better left in the past and I was hesitant when I heard about the show’s comeback. Like most young women who adored the glitz, glamour, and dreams of a potential career in fashion, I spent every year huddled near the television in the living room of my childhood home, waiting for the show to begin. Being a Victoria’s Secret angel meant something — something I felt I could never achieve. But that’s what fashion was, and maybe what it still is.
The angels are coming to you live from New York.
Victoria’s Secret advertised a show that would “reflect who we are today,” which Forbes said likely refers to the brand’s attempt at inclusivity, both in body and gender diversity. The show featured two trans models, Alex Consani and Valentina Sampaio, making good on its promise that gender doesn’t preclude a model from getting their wings. But as I watched thin model after thin model take the runway, I was catapulted right back to my childhood living room, watching women who didn’t look like me set a beauty standard most women will never meet. History so often shapes the way we’re expected to build the future, and we cannot move forward without fully accepting where we came from. While nostalgia was seemingly meant to be the bait to hook these 2024 viewers, it’s almost as if the show was meant to draw on its roots without holding on to any of its substance the brand promised it would bring.
There’s enough information out on the internet to know why the Victoria’s Secret runway show initially went on hiatus, but in just a few words, it had to do with an overall lack of inclusivity as realised after former marketing chief Ed Razek suggested that trans women couldn’t be angels, one of a series of controversies that rocked trust and interest in the brand. That precipitated the brand’s fall from grace, one that prompted what was said to be an overhaul in how the brand approached inclusivity.
Perhaps because of that fall, it felt odd when the pink carpet hosts and VS executives spent 30 minutes reiterating how this night would be “all about women.” They touted the all-women lineup of performers — a first — and hosts Tefi Pessoa and Olivia Culpo, both social media darlings in their own right, delivered what felt like unnatural readings of the teleprompter, telling — not showing us — that this was a “highly anticipated return.” One of the hosts said in an almost rehearsed manner: “Victoria’s Secret is so committed to women's confidence.” And we’re apparently expected to believe them.
Tyra Banks’s voice opened the show as she boomed into the microphone, “A brand new Victoria’s Secret fashion show, where women take the reins and the spotlight.” It is true that women were centre stage in this show, though they always have been. Removing male performers helped alleviate the male gaze, and any event that does result in women feeling good about themselves is largely a net positive. But just because we speak the words doesn’t usher in the action.
I wanted nothing more than to turn on my television and return to the adolescent joy I had for this show, but I’m older now and I realise that, while I thought being an angel meant something then, the real meaning was a legacy of upholding unrealistic and exclusive beauty standards, one the company continues to profit from even as they try to expand their scope. In fact, because of my endless research and deep dives back into this world, I was served TikTok videos on the Victoria's Secret Runway Show. I was so deep into the lore I ended up on an unfamiliar side of the web — the pro-ana believers who still, in 2024, want to uphold the narrative that the VSFS can only be great when skinny is the standard. "Victoria's Secret LISTEN we don’t want plus-size models, we don’t want men on the VS runway, PLEASE LISTEN we want the old iconic 2000s shows.” Hundreds of comments reiterating the same thing: “real, it’s not about being inclusive, it's about looking good.”
While the original VS ethos created these believers, the new and “improved” Victoria's Secret team cannot be held responsible for these random internet people spreading this toxic narrative. I’ll take their word at face value, that the team wanted to produce a more inclusive show, representative of a more inclusive brand. But the proof is in the pudding, and aside from a few “plus” models (who, it’s worth noting, mostly fit into straight sizes), the runway was overwhelmingly thin.
And when are we going to start calling out the brands, rather than each other?
We were treated to Paloma Elsesser and Ashley Graham’s angel debuts, but these gorgeous and well-loved models looked markedly different from their thinner peers. They were more covered up, wearing short dresses and body suits, compared to the string bikini underwear and bras of models like the Hadid sisters. The highlight of the night for me was seeing Graham's uncovered thighs owning the runway, visible for the world to see — and something Graham herself has been advocating for for nearly 10 years. But, for a show that was positioned as more inclusive than the brand’s past, it felt like a gut punch that there were not just very, very few plus models, but that they weren’t given the same treatment when it was their time to shine.
That feeling was magnified because the night was all about buying into the show, literally. Aired on Prime Video, the show partnered with Amazon to make the looks shopable in real time, populating the product on the side of the video streaming on Amazon’s website. But if your attempt at diversity begins and ends with mid-size, hourglass-shaped models, where do I and so many women like me fit in?
That’s all to say that tonight’s show felt like a lot of lip service and little action. When Elsesser joined the VS Collective in 2021, she said she hoped to influence the brand to extend its sizing through a 5X, an expansion from the XXS-XXL range currently featured. That was three years ago, though, and we haven’t yet seen change — even though the brand has been leaning on their new and improved image at every turn.
You can argue that there probably is, in 2024, still an audience for this show. “Let women have fun,” they’ll always say of anyone who is critical of anything with faults. If you liked the show, great! But critiquing a historically problematic institution isn’t about not “letting women have fun.” It’s about recognising that sometimes the things we enjoy cause more harm than its worth. Sometimes "great" things die, and maybe, we should leave them in the past.
This article originally appeared on Teen Vogue.
