The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show came back Tuesday night after a six-year hiatus and I watched it on Amazon Prime so you didn’t have to.
“It’s all about women,” Tyra Banks said at the top of the broadcast, in attempt to convince us, maybe, that there was a purpose here. Something more than selling as many polyester underclothes as possible during the upcoming holiday shopping season. “Come on! Cher is in the house! And if that doesn’t get you on your feet, you might need a pulse check.”
Well, I guess by that measure, I’m basically dead.
“Do you believe in life after love?” was not only the perfectly earnest song to include in this show, but it also seemed like a good question for Victoria’s Secret, which has been working hard for years to have a comeback. Unclear if they believe in life after love, but they clearly believe in using experiential marketing to maximize holiday sales.
The main thing the show did for a lot of us, probably, was clog our social media feeds with images of mostly thin women in mall underwear and stiletto sandals on a runway that looked like high-school gym decked out for a dance. I’m guessing that internally at Victoria’s Secret, the show is being celebrated as a win since “creating social media moments” is the measure of success for everything now and it totally overtook my Instagram feed last night. When I checked TikTok, though, I got surfers in Alaska, so perhaps there’s work to be done.
Before the show started we got a scene of someone in a black helmet zooming through New York City on a motorcycle with a burst of pink light shooting out the back, as though to light Manhattan up pink. The Empire State Building was also lit up pink for the fashion show, which, according to the Empire State Building’s “Lighting Partner Program FAQs” seems to be free. This must have left Victoria’s Secret with enough money for its cast of top models like Alex Consani and the Hadid sisters; performers Lisa, Tyla, and Cher; and front row guests like Cardi B.
Earlier in Back Row
We cut to the runway where someone on a tilted motorcycle is definitely about to start gyrating. The lights come on and we see it’s Lisa, wearing a suggestion of a skirt, a bra with wings sticking out by her armpits, and sleeves. She’s a talented performer and I wondered if Victoria’s Secret paid so much she couldn’t say no or if her team felt like she needed the memes now versus waiting, say, to do the New Year’s celebration in Times Square.
Gigi Hadid opened the show in a loose but skimpy pink onesie with pink wings she wore like a backpack. At one point, she moved her arm toward her back to pull a string or something, and the wings opened like she was about to fly away like a bird (was Nelly Furtado not available for this? that idea’s on me, VS). I saw a post on Instagram from someone who was sitting in the audience who said this moment was exciting because (I paraphrase) we are starved for princess moments. Is that true? I guess if you only look at Vogue Runway The Row slideshows, maybe. As the mother of a toddler girl, I have not in recent memory felt at all disappointed by the number of princess touchpoints available in the world.
The models who followed Gigi walked to a remix of “Femininomenon,” the Chappel Roan song that inspired all those Kamala Harris memes and T-shirts over the summer. It was one of many reminders that “female empowerment” is a marketing trope now. The models were styled by Emmanuelle Alt, the former editor of Vogue Paris who was at one point thought of by many in fashion as the chicest woman in the world. The looks were pared back from the days when the models dressed like sexy toy soldiers, sexy leprechauns, and literal emojis. You don’t go to Alt for camp, you go to her for chic and sexy.
Was it chic, though? Was it sexy? There was a mauve-y section, which felt like an effort at chic. There were see-through sparkly pencil skirts worn over underwear. There were wings that said “Victoria’s“ on one side and “Secret” on the other. Adriana Lima wore black glittery argyle-ish tights and sleeves. Taylor Hill wore palazzo pajama pants in the Victoria’s Secret pink stripe motif. Some of the hair was big and soft. Behati Prinsloo wore sort of a gown. More than one model wore a bunch of black straps with small, nipple-hiding stars. The wings were more likely to be made of feathers than inanimate objects.
Tyla did a lovely job, and Cher looked and sounded great. Rather than wear a version of costume underwear like Lisa and Tyla, she performed in glittery cargo pants and a corset top. If I were going to go to a nightclub, I would want to wear just this.
The casting mirrored the strategy of a lot of big shows these days that include younger models and some exciting veterans. We saw former Angels, including Candice Swanepoel, Alessandra Ambrosio, Joan Smalls, and Irina Shayk. Newer girls included Lila Moss, daughter of Kate Moss, who walked to “I Love Rock and Roll.” Carla Bruni also came out at the end, and Tyra Banks emerged from a big floor tile to close the show wearing leggings, a sparkly corset, and shiny black sleeves. We also saw Ashley Graham and Paloma Elsesser.
The audience for this show, held in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, looked smaller than in past years when it was held in the Armory. I used to attend around 15 years ago, and was perplexed that the audience was filled with men who had clearly migrated up from the Financial District. I asked some of them one year why they were there and they were terrified to tell me. Then, I learned the brand invited them in hopes they’d rank the stock favorably. It was gross.
It was hard to tell from the broadcast who was in the crowd, but the fashion press who attended seemed happy about it. To try to understand the sentiment of people who weren’t in the room, you can wade through comments on enthusiastic Instagrams posted by Victoria’s Secret and media outlets like People. There was a pretty even mix of genuine excitement and nostalgia and “who cares?” I noticed a decent amount of commentary from people who thought the show was boring without the campy leprechaun costumes, which seems like a fair critique. It’s not like we’re here to see groundbreaking fashion that will influence how we dress and the culture for years to come. We’re here to see Lisa, Tyla, and Cher serenade models promoting conventional undergarments that have been gussied up by the one of the world’s best stylists.
Backstage before the show, Interview magazine’s Dara asked Alex Consani what they had for breakfast. Consani replied, “Dick.”
If we have to go through this again next year, there is a clear front-runner for the host job.
Loose Threads, VS Fashion Show Edition
Teen Vogue Associate Editor Aiyana Ishmael authored a great opinion piece, “The Victoria's Secret 2024 Runway Show Promised Inclusivity, So Where Was It?” Ishmael wrote, “One of the hosts said in an almost rehearsed manner: ‘Victoria’s Secret is so committed to women's confidence.’ And we’re apparently expected to believe them.”
If you want to see the after-party pictures, here you go.
Chantal Fernandez, co-author of the new book about Victoria’s Secret Selling Sexy, watched the show near Penn Station and wrote about it for The Cut: “A few people around me did cheer for the performers (Lisa, Tyla, and especially Cher) and the most famous models: Adriana Lima, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Behati Prinsloo, Tyra Banks, and Kate Moss, whose appearance hadn’t been previously announced. No one blinked when Carla Bruni or Eva Herzigová appeared. (Wrong crowd, I guess.)”
Harper’s Bazaar interviewed Tyra Banks about returning to the Victoria’s Secret runway for the first time in 20 years: “I think one of the beautiful things—and I don’t know if people really know this—is when I decided to retire, Victoria’s Secret had come to me and had another contract on the table. And I decided that ‘No, I need to be a talk show host and I need to be trusted for my words. I don’t think I can be taken seriously if I am still a model,’ and maybe that was true at that time. But I think the world has evolved in such a way that I can be a businesswoman and have my ice cream company and speak at business institutions and get my certificate from my Harvard course and teach at Stanford and, yes, be a Victoria’s Secret model.” If all you took away from that was “my ice cream company” — it’s called Smize and Dream.
Doutzen Kroes’s stiletto got stuck on that moveable floor tile, but the moment was edited out of the broadcast.
As a hardcore lingerie lover & collector (I have dropped 1k at Chantal Thomass in Paris in 10 min but have rarely spent that much on a single piece of new clothing outside of early 2000s CDG or Yohji) the one time I went into a VS changing room to try on bras I broke into hives. If you’re looking for inexpensive lingerie there are so many better options than a chain that now markets itself as woke empowerment for women. That said, Alex Consani is the queen of sound bites and I stan her as a new gen Angel 👼
Okay I'm watching now and my early observations are that (a) rather than throw in a token four "plus sized" (lol) models, would it not be more revolutionary for VS to NOT require that every single other model be a size 00 (at most)?!
Also cannot cope with the fact that they blanked out the word "fugly" from Femininomenon – I moved from Ireland to Indiana in March 2020 (don't ask…) and similarly can't get over hearing Olivia Rodrigo on the radio with "goddamn" beeped out. I knew Indiana was puritanical but thought somehow the sexy* undies people would be okay with the word fugly.
*I use that word loosely