Fashion History Lesson: The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

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In 1995, the lingerie industry was forever changed. Unbeknownst to its creators and the models that walked its runway, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show would make lingerie into a fashion statement and a source of empowerment rather than a mere functional necessity.

From 2001 to 2018, the show was a pillar of broadcast television, the one night a year (save for 2004) that anyone could enjoy a fashion show, creating the unlikely bridge between the often closed-off fashion world and the general public. However, when scandal enveloped the brand and the zeitgeist fell out of alignment with its one-dimensional and unapologetic notion that tall, skinny bodies were somehow superior, sales fell and the show was ultimately canceled in 2019.

Last year, the show made a soft (and poorly received) relaunch as an Amazon Prime documentary, but, on Oct. 15, 2024, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will make its official grand return with Gigi Hadid, Imaan Hammam, Candice Swanepoel, Paloma Elsesser, Devyn Garcia, Taylor Hill and more confirmed to walk to the sound of musical performances by Cher, Tyla and Lisa.

The show, in all of its winged, sparkling glory, will be available to stream on Amazon Live and Amazon Prime video in addition to live streams on the brand’s Instagram, TikTok and YouTube channels. Some beloved models will even livestream the show from their personal social media accounts.

Before a mic’d stagehand calls “places” on the sequined spectacular, we’ve taken a deep dive into fashion’s most polarizing event and the brand behind it.

The Early Days of Victoria’s Secret

Founded in 1977, Victoria’s Secret was envisioned by Roy Raymond, a Californian who felt unwelcome and embarrassed while buying lingerie for his wife (and eventual co-founder) Gaye Raymond at a Palo Alto department store. The first Victoria’s Secret, taking its name from Queen Victoria, was modeled after Raymond’s imagination of a glamorous Victorian-era boudoir.

By 1982, when the couple sold Victoria’s Secret to Leslie Wexner’s retail holding company The Limited (later called L Brands), they owned five locations in the Palo Alto area. The Victoria’s Secret catalog launched in 1982 as well, bringing the brand’s lacy underthings to customers around the country.

“Before Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie industry was much more secretive,” says Suzanne Piazza, associate professor at FIT, Parsons and Kent State. “[Items] were not displayed the way they are today.” This all began to shift in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “Thanks to Madonna, innerwear was outerwear. Everything kind of started to change.”

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

With the launch of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, lingerie really went mainstream.

The first Victoria’s Secret Fashion show was held at New York City’s Plaza Hotel in 1995. The brainchild of Wexner and then CMO of L Brands Ed Razek, the show wasn’t like anything the industry had seen.

The company struggled to find models in its first year, due to the risqué connotation of lingerie modeling, a stigma that the brand would quickly dispel. “Victoria’s Secret coming to the playing field, having their fashion shows — it was exciting for the industry,” says Piazza. Not only was the show exciting, but it also transformed the way the public perceived lingerie.

“They presented this very appealing idea that our underwear could be fashion, just like our clothing,” says Chantal Fernandez, features writer at The Cut and co-author — alongside Lauren Sherman — of the book “Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon,” which was released on Oct. 8. (Fernandez and Sherman are also both former employees of Fashionista.) “And the fashion show was part of the idea that you’re not buying [the lingerie] as a daily, needed garment. This is fashion, this is fun, this is a way to express yourself. And that definitely boosted their business, and was a very effective strategy for a while.”

Patricia Velasquez, who modeled in the first show, described it as high-energy with beautiful lighting, though it lacked the Swarovski crystals, wings and musical performances it’s known for today.

Claudia Schiffer wore the first fantasy bra, a feature of Victoria’s Secret’s long-standing Swarovski partnership, in 1996, though it only appeared in campaign images — not the runway. The “Million Dollar Bra” required that the supermodel be driven in an armored car and accompanied by two armed guards when traveling to and from the promotional photoshoot for the show.

The title “Angel” and its associated wings didn’t become a part of the Victoria’s Secret brand until 1997, when its “Angel” collection was released. Tyra Banks wore the first pair of wings on the runway in 1998, and ever since, they’ve become synonymous with the brand. Some even flew on the stage in harnesses and wings for what was supposed to be a one-time spectacle.

1999 marked the first time the show could be viewed by remote audiences. Two years before the show was broadcast on national television, it was live-streamed in a partnership with Broadcast.com and IBM, much like how the show will be presented this year. Back then, though, Razek said the stream was “about the size of two postage stamps in the middle of your screen,” in an interview with Elle.

Victoria’s Secret really hit its stride in the new millennium, with its $15 million Red Hot Fantasy Bra and matching panties walking the runway in 2000. The show was held in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival that year and returned to New York City in 2001 for its first TV broadcast.

Before the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show began its longtime partnership with CBS (it aired on the network from 2002 through 2017), the first broadcast was hosted by ABC. CBS took over the broadcast in 2002, the same year Victoria’s Secret launched Pink, as ABC hoped to align itself with a more family-friendly image.

The broadcasts brought fashion into American living rooms and made the Angels (think Adriana Lima, Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Gisele Bündchen, Alessandra Ambrosio, Doutzen Kroes and Candice Swanepoel) into household names. Angels frequently topped Forbes‘ highest-paid models list, with Bündchen making just under $12.8 million in 2003.

In 2004, the show took an unexpected hiatus, which Razek confirmed was due to apprehension following Janet Jackson’s shocking Super Bowl halftime show. The company opted to host “Angels Across America,” a road trip from NYC to Miami and Las Vegas that year, taking Bündchen, Banks, Lima, Heidi Klum and Alessandra Ambrosio to meet fans across the country.

After the road trip, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show bounced around Los Angeles, Miami and New York for the remainder of the decade. The aughts saw performances by Destiny’s Child, the Spice Girls, Will.I.Am, Usher and more.

Beyond the broadcast itself, the shows were the subject of extensive press coverage, with reporters clamoring for behind-the-scenes access and interviews with the models, performers, hair and makeup artists and execs involved. The invite became one of fashion’s most coveted each year.

“I remember feeling like I’d gotten Wonka’s golden ticket,” says Elana Fishman, founding editor of Page Six Style. “[The fashion show] had the world’s top supermodels, it had these amazing musical guests, it had all the pomp and circumstance of a televised lingerie spectacular.”

In its heyday, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was a fantasy made real (or made to seem that way), with two tapings being taken and spliced together to make the best possible show for the airwaves.

Fishman described the backstage experience as a “free-for-all” in a warehouse-sized space where reporters, makeup artists, showrunners and everyone in between ran around getting the girls ready and getting coverage.

“It was a full-day glam session for the models,” Fishman says. “All the girls would be at their makeup and bronzing stations. Reporters like myself would go around and basically grab interviews with whoever was available at the time. It was kind of chaotic, but I do remember most of the models being incredibly nice.”

In 2014, the show and its Angels went overseas yet again. Held at the Earl’s Court in London, that year’s show featured Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Hozier and Taylor Swift (for the second time). This was the year Elsa Hosk and Grande’s now-iconic meme was born. (Hosk confirmed to Elle that her wing did not in fact hit the singer.)

With the rise of social media, now-familiar faces Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner joined the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2015. Gigi’s sister Bella Hadid joined the modern Angel trio in 2016, marking the arrival of a new generation of Angels.

While press coverage of the brand remained positive, and largely focused on public fascination with the Angels’ diets and workout routines, television viewership of the show fell from 10.3 million in 2011 to only 3.2 million in 2018 before its cancellation the next year.

The Fall

“By 2015 to 2016, it did start to feel really, really dated, and a little bit inappropriate in certain ways,” says Sherman. “I remember getting a call from someone and just being like, ‘Are they still really doing this? It just feels like the world has moved on.'”

It had. In 2017, the televised spectacular saw a 30% decline in viewership among viewers aged 18 to 49 from the year prior.

Fashion and pop-culture writer Emily Kirkpatrick echoed, “[The show] felt very divorced from the times and the conversations that women were actually having about beauty in the fashion industry and its impact on mental health and body image and all of that. It just seemed, for a long time, like Victoria’s Secret got to keep trucking along without being questioned.”

2017 marked the beginning of the end for the polarizing Victoria’s Secret image the world had come to love or hate. Karlie Kloss announced that she would cease working with the brand, telling Glamour that Victoria’s Secret no longer aligned with her values. Her contract ended in July of 2019.

“[The models] were trained to keep the message extremely positive,” Fernandez says. “People were talking about mental health or other challenges that they’d gone through in their lives, and Victoria’s Secret didn’t didn’t do any of that. They kept it light. They kept it positive, super friendly. It’s impressive. To be those models you had to be really on all the time.”

Razek’s infamous Vogue interview was published on Nov. 8, 2018. In the piece, he is quoted saying that the brand wouldn’t hire transgender or plus-size models, as they would ruin the show’s fantasy. The backlash was swift. Kloss and fellow Angel Lily Aldridge were quick to call him out on social media, posting, “Trans and GNC [gender non-conforming] people are not a debate” on their Instagram stories.

Before the scandal, “they were a company that barely ever got bad press,” Fernandez says. “I think [the Vogue article] unleashed a feeling that had been building for a long time – the feeling that it [was] outdated, that it [was] tacky.”

The brand quickly saw the financial consequences of various factors: diverse campaigns by competitors, declining mall traffic and its own decision to stop selling swimwear. As a result, Victoria’s Secret stock prices plummeted by 35% from 2017 to 2018, with sales falling each month.

Customers resonated with and put their money behind campaigns like “#AerieReal”, which launched in 2014 and is still used by the brand today, and Rihanna‘s Savage X Fenty shows, broadcast directly onto streaming platforms from 2019-2022. Aerie, Savage X Fenty and 2019 newcomer Skims featured women of varied body types and sizes in their marketing, reflecting the modern values that Victoria’s Secret was slow to adopt.

It would later be revealed that, during the 2018 show, only a few hours after his defaming Vogue piece was published, Razek reportedly touched an Angel’s crotch, the precipice of years of reported misconduct and harassment. His behavior allegedly included asking models to sit on his lap and attempting to kiss them. Knowledge of his behaviors came to a head in 2019 when his ties to Jeffrey Epstein became public; Razek left the company a few months later.

Epstein was also tied to Wexner as a trustee to his Wexner Foundation, however, Wexner was quick to distance himself once reports of Epstein’s behavior became public. Wexner officially left the company in 2020.

The Rebrand

Then began the rebrand. In 2021, Victoria’s Secret announced that there would be no more Angels, but rather “an ever-growing group of accomplished women” known as the Victoria’s Secret Collective. The ambassadorship program brought on seven multi-hyphenate models (including political advocates, athletes and entrepreneurs) as its founding members.

The company broke away from L Brands and went public in August of 2021, marking the year as one of transformation in its finances and messaging. But a couple of years later, relics of OG Victoria’s Secret started to make their way back into the brand’s marketing.

The “My Wings, My Way” and “Icon” campaigns made headlines in 2023, featuring familiar faces like Taylor Hill, Lima, Bündchen and Candice Swanepoel, alongside new VS Collective members Tess McMillan, Alva Claire, Paloma Elsesser and more.

After five years focused on other marketing channels, Victoria’s Secret dove back into events in 2023 with “Victoria’s Secret The Tour ’23,” a documentary and fashion show rolled into one. The Amazon Prime exclusive took audiences to Bogotá, Lagos, London and Tokyo for a look into the making of that year’s fashion show collection and the lives of the designers that created it. While a step forward in theory, it wasn’t well received.

“I think [the tour] was really poorly executed,” says Sherman. “They just didn’t read the room. They used tactics that they felt were politically correct or good for the times without thinking about the brand.” Fernandez added, “the message just isn’t clear.”

“It felt disingenuous,” and “too late,” says Kirkpatrick. In a sense, the brand lost its identity, rooted in conveying what’s sexy: a word that’s hard to define in current culture.

Looking to the Future

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“I think the consumer still wants that wow-power, the fantasy of Victoria’s Secret,” Piazza says. “But they have to do it in the correct way.”

Now that other lingerie brands have built their image on the foundations of accessibility and inclusion, there’s understandably some skepticism around Victoria’s Secret’s ability regain the cultural relevance and market share it lost to these modern competitors.

“When we see those models, we don’t want them to all be the five-foot-nine, typical, gorgeous, skinny model, because we’re not all like that,” Piazza says. While she says that there is a place for this “typical” model, she believes that diversity is the only way Victoria’s Secret can broaden its customer base to include new demos like Gen Z. Victoria’s Secret now offers seven shades of nude and sizes up to XXL, but with the rise of brands like Savage X Fenty and Skims that embraced diversity from the very beginning, getting back to the 33% market share it once had seems daunting.

There are other big changes underway at the brand: In just the last couple of months, it hired Hillary Super, formerly of Savage X Fenty, as its CEO, announced it’s bringing on Joseph Altuzarra as its first “Atelier Designer in Residence” and dressed superstar Sabrina Carpenter in custom and archival designs for her “Short n’ Sweet” tour. With Emmanuelle Alt styling the comeback spectacular and supermodels both new and old set to walk the runway, Oct. 15 may bring new life to the brand — and the legacy of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

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Source: Fashionista.com