The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show has been taken out of storage, shaking off its dusty feathers to jam some of the world’s hottest women into its cheapest looking thongs. Gigi and Bella Hadid, Kate Moss and daughter Lila all somehow contractually obliged to don ill-fitting synthetic lingerie and parade down a catwalk to canned crowd noises.
If the format feels dated, that’s because it is. Little has changed since the Angels were mothballed in 2019 while the company scrambled to do damage control.
You could perhaps forgive the executives for misjudging the zeitgeist. Skinny is, unfortunately, fashionable once more, thanks to Ozempic and social media’s relentless need to always be camera-ready. The fashion industry has got bored with its half-arsed attempt at designing clothes for women with fuller arses. VS dropped its own faux-feminist rebrand last year like a hot potato, blaming plus-sized models for plunging sales rather than its naff plunge bras.
Elaborate “beauty and fitness” regimes (read: starvation and surgery) shilled by the original Angels in the Nineties and Noughties have been re-birthed for the influencer generation, like Margaret Qualley slithering out of Demi Moore’s spine in The Substance. You can just imagine the drab men in suits high-fiving each other in a bland boardroom somewhere, assuring each other that sex sells once again.
But while ideas about skinny equating to sexy have circled back to the dawn of the millennium, today’s younger generation abhor sex. If you want to endure psychic damage, just look at the teenagers on X (formerly Twitter) clutching their metaphorical pearls over pop stars posing in doggy style while wearing layers of sparkly stage tights. “I’m 17 and I’m AFRAID of Sabrina Carpenter” tweeted one apparently traumatized Zoomer. Between these New Puritans and their Incel boy counterparts, who exactly is going to be purchasing a pair of “Very Sexy Rose Lace Trim High Leg Thong Knickers” with “no back coverage” for £14?
As a statistically hornier millennial, there’s nothing for me in VS: Reloaded either. My cohort is currently fending off the blame for plunging birth rates, not because we’re not banging but because we can’t afford a house to put the resulting progeny in. I was never the target market to begin with, as my cup size overfloweth to the point that only Bravissimo can serve my underwiring needs. VS barely goes up to a DDD, firmly in the realm of what I call “chic tits” i.e. boobs that do not interfere with fashion.
“The secrets underneath the rhinestones and feathers were rotten to the poly-blend core.”
Mind you, as a closeted teen I admittedly was very into the Angels themselves. That classic dichotomy: do I want to be them or be with them? Rumours that Stella Maxwell was hooking up with Miley Cyrus were my Roman Empire. But that was before I realised the horrific reality of what these women had to endure to win their coveted wings. Like coming out and becoming vegetarian, I prefer to consume my sexy lady pictures in a more ethical fashion these days.
Because the inescapable truth is that the secrets underneath the rhinestones and feathers were rotten to the poly-blend core.
The party line was the VS show was cancelled because bigoted executives refused to let trans models on the catwalk, something the brand is clearly hoping to garner positive headlines with by casting Alex Consani and Valentina Sampaio. But it’s too little too late when inclusivity is but a nipple pasty slapped haphazardly over decades of abuse.
VS canned the shows because investigative journalists riding the MeToo wave were coming too close to the truth: that the entire set-up of the show was cover for the rich and powerful men at parent company L Brand – and their friends – to access and control women. VS was never about sex – it’s always been about power. Power over women specifically, and to escape any ramifications generally.
“VS was never about sex – it’s always been about power. Power over women specifically.”
Ed Razek, deputy to L Brand founder Leslie Wexner, allegedly used VS show casting calls to grope women, demand their personal phone numbers, inveigle them into private dinners and punish them if they refused. He reportedly sexually harassed Bella Hadid, telling her to “lose the panties” and making obscene comments about her breasts. Another model alleged he touched her crotch before the 2018 show. Employees spoke of a toxic workplace full of harassment and bullying where Razek was said to publicly berate his female staff over their weight and carb consumption.
As for billionaire Wexner, his finances used to be managed by one Jeffery Epstein. The paedophile sex criminal can be seen lurking in photos from the inaugural 1995 VS show. Survivors spoke of how Epstein claimed he could get them cast, luring young models to hotel rooms under this pretext to sexually assault them. Vulnerable women had to make deals with devils to become an angel, Faustian pacts made in itchy thongs destined for landfill.
Is five years enough to shake off this level of sleaze?
Contemporaneous brand Abercrombie & Fitch seems to have managed it. After spending years selling tweens and teens teeny clothes with topless male models, former chief executive Mike Jeffries has been accused of presiding over a sick sexual exploitation ring. In a horrible mirror to the goings on at VS, vulnerable young male models claimed they were trafficked to events under promise of being cast as A&F models only to be drugged and pressured into sex with Jeffries and his partner. He denies the accusations.
“There’s not enough Bare Vanilla Body Mist in the world to mask the lingering stench of VS’s recent past.”
Jeffries stepped down from A&F in 2014 when sales started to tank, leaving with a £20.5 million pension – now suspended. The brand has since shed its nudity-heavy sales model, offering surprisingly good quality clothes in a wide range of sizes. They do good jeans and well-cut dresses you can wear to a summer wedding without shocking elderly relatives. Consumers have voted with their wallets, and the brand is now reporting profits of £3.3 billion.
VS has attempted no such rehabilitation. If you want to “shop the show collection” you can see the gorgeous but glazed-eyed Gigi Hadid posed like she’s been hog tied in baby pink-and-white striped undies. Click through to a shockingly uninspired range of undies in limited sizes; 100 per cent polyester sets that fit badly even on a size zero model.
Perhaps there’s not enough Bare Vanilla Body Mist in the world to mask the lingering stench of VS’s recent past, but this insipid comeback is an insult to VS's survivors and consumers — and I highly doubt anyone will buy it.
