‘Not the same’: Fans’ verdict on VS comeback

A number of the world’s biggest supermodels took to the runway for the lingerie brand at its first show since 2018, including Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Bella and Gigi Hadid, Behati Prinsloo, Candice Swanepoel, Ashley Graham and Carla Bruni.

The annual, televised event – a bona fide ratings juggernaut – was once among the highest-anticipated nights on the fashion calendar.

But in 2019, the show was cancelled amid lagging brand sales, declining viewership and a sea of criticisms and controversy, largely directed at its lack of diversity and inclusivity.

After steadily rehabbing its image in recent years – launching partnerships with the likes of soccer star Megan Rapinoe, transgender model Valentina Sampaio, plus-size model Paloma Elsesser and Puerto Rican model Sofia Jirau, who has Down syndrome – the lingerie brand announced in May its runway would return once more.

Despite a more diverse representation of age, ethnicity and body types, the consensus from many on social media was that, even with these “improvements”, the show “just doesn’t fit in with the 2020s”.

“I’m low-key disappointed in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show this year,” one wrote on X.

“No one cares about Victoria’s Secret’s non-inclusive fashion show. I will not be watching,” a third said.

Another wrote: “I don’t think it was a dream show. Our goddesses were lovely, but everyone saw what went down. Victoria’s Secret is not the same anymore.”

For all its talk of championing diversity, one X user questioned: “Is it me or are all my plus-size ladies … covered?”

To which someone else responded: “And the older models too …”

One figure who – as InStyle put it – “nobody even dared dream about” walking the storied catwalk, though, was British icon Kate Moss. Yet walk it she did, in her first-ever appearance for the lingerie brand, dressed in a black lace slip over a bodysuit with abdominal cutouts and feathered wings.

Fans on social media were at a loss for words over the 50-year-old’s surprise appearance, declaring she’d “NEVER looked better”.

“MOTHER THE OG SUPER MODEL OF ALL THE TIME Kate moss makes her come back at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show,” another post on X read.

“Kate Moss is back at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (I was screaming),” someone else said.

Moss took to the runway moments after her 22-year-old daughter and fellow model, Lila, walked it.

 

Today’s show, hosted by former Victoria’s Secret Angel Tyra Banks and featuring its “first-ever, all-female line-up” of artists, headlined by Cher, will “reflect who we are today”, Victoria’s Secret said.

South African singer Tyla, who was among the performers, stunned on the “pink carpet” ahead of the show in a Salih Balta gown with crystal embellishments and strategically-placed cut-outs.

While today’s event took place in Brooklyn, New York, it was broadcast live on Amazon Prime Video, as well as on Victoria’s Secret’s Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts.

Victoria’s Secret chief design officer, Janie Schaffer, said the brand’s “consumers are huge fans and they’re set in their ways”.

“They want the show to come back. They want it to be what it was before,” Ms Schaffer, who joined Victoria’s Secret in 2020, told Vogue Business.

“So we’ve been dancing a fine line (between) what the transformation of the brand feels like, and the expectation of everything that people used to love about the show, which was this feeling of escapism and this unadulterated glamour and wings and the runway.”

Key differences for the show in 2024, Ms Schaffer said, will be the cast – which she stressed was more size- and age-inclusive – and its product focus (unlike in the past, all looks on the runway will be things consumers can actually buy in-store).