The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show has been shaken out of storage to squeeze some of the world’s hottest women into the cheapest-looking thongs. Gigi and Bella Hadid, Kate Moss and her daughter Lila were somehow contractually obliged to wear ill-fitting synthetic underwear and walk the runway to the sounds of the canned crowd.
If the format feels dated, that’s because it is. Little has changed since the Angels were shelved in 2019 as the company scrambled to do damage control.
You can perhaps forgive the executives for misjudging the zeitgeist. Thanks to Ozempic and social media’s relentless need to be camera-ready at all times, skinny has unfortunately become trendy once again. The fashion industry is tired of half-baked attempts to design clothes for women with fuller hips. VS dropped its faux-feminist rebrand like a hot potato last year, blaming plus-size models rather than naff bras for a sales slump.
The elaborate “beauty and fitness” regimes (read: starvation and surgery) recommended by the original Angels in Nineties and Nights have been reborn for the influencer generation, like Margaret Qualley emerging from Demi Moore’s spine in The Substance. You can imagine boring men in suits high-fiving each other in a drab boardroom, assuring each other that sex will sell once again.
But while the idea that skinny equals sexiness dates back to the turn of the millennium, today’s younger generation hates sex. If you want to endure the psychic damage, check out the teens on X (formerly Twitter) posing doggy style and wearing sparkly stage tights, clutching their metaphorical pearls over pop stars. “I’m 17 and I’m SCARED of Sabrina Carpenter,” tweeted one person, apparently traumatized by Zoomer. Between these New Puritans and their Incel male counterparts, who will buy a pair of “High Leg Thong Knickers with Very Sexy Rose Lace Trim” for exactly £14?
As a statistically hornier millennial, there’s nothing in VS: Reloaded for me either. My group is currently deflecting blame for falling birth rates, not because we can’t do it, but because we can’t afford a home to house the resulting offspring. I was never the target market to begin with, as my chest size had overflowed to the point where only the Bravissimo could meet my cabling needs. VS barely reaches DDD firmly in the realm of what I call “stylish boobs”, i.e. boobs that don’t interfere with fashion.
“The secrets beneath the rhinestones and feathers, the poly-blend had been rotten to its core.”
Remember, as a closeted teenager, I confess, I was very fond of the Angels themselves. It’s the classic dilemma: Do I want to be them or be with them? Rumors that Stella Maxwell was hooking up with Miley Cyrus were my Roman Empire. But that was before realizing the horrific reality of what these women had to endure to earn their coveted wings. Like going out and becoming a vegetarian, I prefer to consume my sexy women photos in a more ethical way these days.
Because the inescapable truth was that the secrets beneath the rhinestones and feathers were rotten to the poly-blend core.
The party line was that the VS show was canceled because bigoted executives wouldn’t allow trans models to appear on the runway; The brand is clearly hoping to garner positive headlines by casting Alex Consani and Valentina Sampaio. But it’s too little too late when inclusivity is nothing more than nipple paste casually slapped on after decades of abuse.
VS canceled the shows because investigative journalists riding the MeToo wave got too close to the truth: the entire setup of the show was a 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 was always about power. Having power over women in particular and avoiding the consequences in general.
“VS was never about sex; It was always about power. Especially having power over women.”
Ed Razek, assistant to L Brand founder Leslie Wexner, allegedly used VS show calls to fondle women, request their personal phone numbers, invite them to private dinners, and punish them if they refused. He reportedly sexually assaulted Bella Hadid, telling her to “take off your panties” and making suggestive comments about her breasts. Another model claimed he touched her crotch before a 2018 fashion show. Employees described a toxic workplace filled with harassment and bullying, with Razek reportedly publicly berating his female staff for their weight and carbohydrate consumption.
As for billionaire Wexner, his finances were managed by a person named Jeffery Epstein. Pedophilic sex offender lurks in photos from the inaugural VS show in 1995. Survivors said Epstein lured young models to hotel rooms under the pretext that he could sexually assault them. Vulnerable women had to make deals with demons to become an angel; Faustian deals made with itchy thongs destined for landfills.
Is five years enough to recover from this level?
Contemporary brand Abercrombie & Fitch seems to have nailed it. Former CEO Mike Jeffries, who spent years selling tiny clothes to teens and tweens alongside topless male models, has been accused of heading a sick sexual exploitation ring. In a horrific reflection of what was happening at VS, vulnerable young male models claimed they were trafficked to events with the promise of being cast as A&F models, only to be drugged and forced to have sex with Jeffries and his partner. He denies the accusations.
“There aren’t enough Naked Vanilla Body Sprays in the world to mask the lingering scent of VS’s recent past.”
Jeffries left A&F in 2014 when sales began to fall, leaving him with a £20.5 million pension – now suspended. The brand has since abandoned its nude-heavy sales model and started offering surprisingly high-quality clothing in a wide range of sizes. They make good jeans and well-cut dresses that you can wear to a summer wedding without surprising your older relatives. Consumers voted with their wallets and the brand has now reported profits of £3.3bn.
VS made no such rehabilitation attempt. If you want to “shop the runway collection,” you can see the gorgeous but bright-eyed Gigi Hadid posing as if she were hogtied in pink-and-white striped baby underwear. Click through to view a surprisingly dull range of underwear in limited sizes; 100 percent polyester suits that don’t fit well even on a size zero model.
Maybe there isn’t enough Bare Vanilla Body Mist in the world to mask the lingering scent of VS’s recent past, but this bland comeback is an insult to VS survivors and consumers, and I highly doubt anyone will buy it.