Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will be revived this fall: ‘We’ve read the comments and heard you’
Has the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show re-earned its wings?
The iconic lingerie brand announced that its hallmark catwalk will return after a five-year hiatus this fall, promising glamour, music and, you guessed it, wings.
“We’ve read the comments and heard you,” the company wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, posting a video featuring supermodel Candace Swanepoel.
The show, the lingerie brand shared, “will reflect who we are today,” presumably hinting at a total overhaul of the familiar Victoria’s Secret shows of years’ past, featuring glamorous supermodels sashaying in skimpy lingerie and colossal angel wings.
The post teased: “Stay tuned…it only gets more iconic from here.”
The runway show was cancelled in 2019 amid of series of scandals and backlash from critics who slammed the brand for lacking diversity and inclusivity.
Edward Razek, the former chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company L Brands who resigned in 2019, sparked controversy in a Vogue interview when dismissing ideas of integrating inclusivity in the runway spectacular “because the show is a fantasy.
He was later accused of harrassment and perpetuating a “culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment” at the company, per The Hollywood Reporter.
In the years since the televised production — chalk-full of bra-baring bombshells and annual music performances from the likes of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and The Weeknd — came to screeching halt, the brand scrubbed its storefronts clean of its once-hallmark angel image while beginning to include more diverse models in its branding and marketing in a bid to be “more inviting.”
“We are moving from what men want to what women want; We are going from a look to a feeling, from excluding most women to including all women, from mostly unattainable to grounded in real life,” Victoria’s Secret CEO Martin Waters told The Post in 2021.
At the time, Raul Martinez, who served as the brand’s creative director and now works at Vogue, rang the death knell for the term “angel,” saying the once-esteemed title was “retired.”
Victoria’s Secret has promised a long-awaited revival of its fashion show for years. And in 2021, Waters vowed to “redefine” the event as we know it.
Last year, the women’s lingerie brand announced it would bring back a revamped iteration and delivered one — in the form of a film last fall, which lacked the sexed-up allure of yore. “The Tour,” as it was called, traded Victoria’s Secret bombshell image for a fantastical celebration of beauty in all forms.
