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At the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows of yonder, skinny reigned supreme. As the brand prepares to make its first official return to the runway since 2018, execs say it’ll be different. But what customers actually want from the former lingerie leader is far from clear-cut.
The brand has been slowly working its way back into the cultural zeitgeist, from the hire of Hillary Super, ex-CEO of Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty (the brand VS is often measured up against), in August, to Sabrina Carpenter posing for Time Magazine in a Victoria’s Secret look first modelled by Naomi Campbell in 1997. (She’s also worn many custom VS looks on her Short n’ Sweet tour.) Last Wednesday, VS announced Joseph Altuzzarra as its first “atelier designer in residence”.
Now, the return of the runway show is an attempt to bring back just enough of that glamazon fantasy that feels appropriate for 2024.
“Our 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,” says Janie Schaffer, chief design officer, who joined the brand in 2020. “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.”
The Victoria’s Secret fantasy came crashing down in 2019, when then-owner Leslie Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein were covered with fervour by media outlets. This followed outrage over controversial comments by former executive Ed Razek in a now-infamous 2018 Vogue interview. VS cancelled the show, which had already seen ratings steadily decline as consumers questioned its (and the brand’s) relevance in a changing industry (at the time, VS remained staunchly committed to ultra-thin, mostly white models). The show remained on hiatus until last year, when it returned as a film, to mixed reviews.
Schaffer highlights key differences in tonight’s show: the cast is more size and age inclusive (confirmed plus-size models include Paloma Elsesser and Ashley Graham), it’s product-focused (all of the lingerie is commercial product for sale, unlike in the past), and it brings in names from the fashion world, including styling by Emmanuelle Alt, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, casting by Piergiorgio Del Moro and ready-to-wear pieces by Altuzarra.
Response to the runway show’s comeback vary. “I want the fantasy!” one comment reads on Instagram, where show content has outperformed VS’s regular social output by almost threefold, says Sarah Sylvester, executive VP of marketing at Victoria’s Secret. Others are concerned that the size inclusivity is surface level. As of now, Victoria’s Secret bra sizes go up to a 44G, but the larger sizes aren’t always carried in store (the brand says it will continue to expand its size and product range, without providing further detail). “It just feels performative and like faux inclusion if they are putting plus models on the runway but not putting plus-size pieces on the rack,” says Sarah Chiwaya, plus-size fashion expert, creator and consultant.
This was echoed by music artist Lizzo, who launched size-inclusive shapewear brand Yitty in 2022. “If brands start doing this only because they’ve received backlash then what happens when the ‘trends’ change again?” she asked on X.
The wind is already changing. As the body positivity movement backslides and Ozempic proliferates, the return of the show feels fraught. On the fashion week runways, size inclusivity efforts stalled. Model size — and health — has dwindled since the size inclusivity boom happened around 2019 to 2023, casting agent Emma Matell told Vogue Business after this season wrapped.
We’re in the midst of a backwards shift, agrees Jeanie Annan-Lewin, consultant and creative director of Perfect Magazine, who recently wrote about fashion’s return to size zero in an article for Elle titled ‘My body has gone out of style’. “There’s this mood in the air of uncertainty, and brands seem to be desperate to get back to ‘normal’. Sadly, the normal seems to be a thin and predominantly white one,” she says.
“The return of the VS show makes me feel cautious. While I used to watch the shows, I’m not sure there’s a place for them now. Unless people are presented in a modern, current way, the whole thing might feel gimmicky,” Annan-Lewin continues. “It’s not enough to simply include people [with bigger bodies], because then those included have to be spokespeople, which doesn’t seem fair — they didn’t cause the societal disconnect. The message needs to be that bodies are functional and beautiful no matter what size, and we need the empowerment to be evident throughout the show.”
Can Victoria’s Secret achieve this while doubling down on the show’s initial promise: glitter, sparkle and fantasy? Schaffer thinks so. “Because of the transformational work we’ve done over the last three or four years, we have got the customer much more used to the fact that you know Victoria’s Secret is for everybody,” she says. This includes hiring a new (primarily female) executive team and board, replacing the Angels with the ‘VS Collective’ (including ex-football player Megan Rapinoe, model Elsesser and tennis player Naomi Osaka) and new products (such as an adaptive intimates line launched in 2023). “We celebrate all women — age, size diversity — in every way. We’ve committed to that in the product, we’ve committed to that in the show,” Schaffer says.
There’s merit in Victoria’s Secret’s outward embrace of inclusivity, Chiwaya says. “While Victoria’s Secret no longer has the same chokehold on setting the standard of what is ‘sexy’ — see: the cultural impact of the very body diverse and very hot Savage x Fenty shows — they do still have influence,” she says. “There is a possibility that this can push other brands to look at size inclusion as something they need to keep up with — that’s if VS actually shows visibly plus-size representation on the runway.”
Reimagining the role of the show
Beyond using a wider range of body shapes and sizes, VS has made a couple of other changes to the show, in the hopes of making it feel more relevant. Now, the focus is on the product.
Firstly, it’ll be repositioned away from the ‘untouchable fantasy’ narrative: consumers will be invited along for the ride with more behind-the-scenes content, and the pink carpet and show will be live streamed rather than edited and broadcast two weeks later. “That’s so much more how people are living these days,” says Sylvester. Observers agree that a focus on community is needed to succeed as a lingerie brand today; as evidenced by the success of Fenty and Skims, and smaller players such as Cou Cou and Lemonade Dolls.
Secondly, everything save for the “couture-like” coats and garments worn on top of the lingerie will be shoppable. The show will feature products that’ll be available from 15 October through to new year. “That is such a fundamental change to anything we’ve done before,” says Schaffer. “It’s not these separate ideas that used to sit so disconnected from the rest of the business.”
This is a smart move, says Chantal Fernandez, who recently co-authored Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unravelling of an American Icon with fellow journalist Lauren Sherman. “What was always so powerful about the Victoria’s Secret fashion show was the concept, the fantasy, the top-of-the-funnel idea,” she says. “What’s more effective today is to get people talking about product.” The most effective way to do this is to use platforms like TikTok to encourage consumers to discuss product attributes. Today, word of mouth is the best promotion brands can get, she says.
She adds that in today’s shapewear-obsessed world, it’s much cooler to talk about function and comfort. “Customers today care so much about comfort and quality that they have to have more of a product conversation than they did in [VS’s] earlier peaks where it was all about selling hope, not help. Talking about how a bra fits was unsexy. Now, I think it’s a really important part of the consumer’s mindset when they shop for bras.”
Schaffer agrees: “To not make the show about our product would seem pointless, actually.”
Beyond tonight’s show, Fernandez is watching to see how the brand evolves under newly appointed Super’s leadership. “She just arrived, I’m sure she’s just getting the lay of the land. But it’ll be interesting to see if, under her leadership, there will be more focus on the word of mouth that doesn’t happen in a brand-building platform like a fashion show.”
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