The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returned to Brooklyn last night for its second post-hiatus outing, and for the second year in a row, it landed with the splat of something past its sell-by date.
The once-glittering crown jewel of corporate sexuality, once synonymous with a kind of aspirational femininity that dominated the 2000s, now exists as a stubborn monument to a past America.
When the show imploded in 2019 under a tidal wave of backlash – accusations of transphobia, fatphobia, toxic workplace culture, and general irrelevance – it felt like a cultural shift had finally been codified.
Chief marketing officer Ed Razek’s now-infamous 2018 interview with Vogue, in which he dismissed calls for trans or plus-size inclusion by insisting that Victoria’s Secret didn’t ‘market to the whole world,’ became an epitaph for a dying brand. The following year, the show was cancelled after its lowest viewing numbers ever.
But nostalgia, capitalism, and contrarianism are powerful drugs. In 2024, Victoria’s Secret returned to the runway.
During its exile, Victoria’s Secret tried to launder its image. The company swapped wings for slogans, rebranding itself as a ‘female empowerment’ brand under the VS Collective.
Megan Rapinoe, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and other public feminists were photographed in push-up bras and marketed as symbols of ‘authentic womanhood.’ In 2021, the company promised to become ‘the world’s leading advocate for women,’ a claim so tone-deaf it bordered on dystopian. Behind the rhetoric, the lingerie remained the same.
And all it really meant was pictures of ‘accomplished’ #GirlBosses – Megan Rapinoe, among others – in their underwear dominated ads for the brand, while the company made almost no strides towards actual size inclusivity in their products.
Yet only 2.6million people tuned in at its peak, compared to the 10m who once watched in its early-2000s heyday. And at the same time, it was met with countless think pieces and social media posts decrying the vision of womanhood the brand still promoted.
In comparison, this year’s follow-up arrived quietly, without much enthusiasm or outrage.
This latest iteration, helmed by executive creative director Adam Selman, leaned heavily on the language of redemption while offering more of the same. Selman told Vogue the show would be ‘powerful, playful, and grounded in storytelling.’
But instead, it came off as almost desperate, employing shock tactics like the moment Amelia Gray walked the runway in a see-through sparkly red dress with a back so low it revealed the entirety of her thong-clad backside.
The lineup certainly ticked modern boxes: Madison Beer, Karol G, Missy Elliot, and K-pop megastars TWICE performed; Jasmine Tookes walked visibly pregnant; trans model Alex Consani and curve model Paloma Elsesser returned; WNBA star Angel Reese and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee joined the ranks as first-time Angels.
But for all its nods to progress, the underlying fantasy remains unchanged. The camera still lingers on taut stomachs, impossible angles, and breasts lifted sky-high by enormous push-up bras.
The tokenism is textbook: diversity as accessory and defensive posturing, not essence. The women may be more varied in background, but the aesthetic ideal remains eerily consistent: thin, symmetrical, traditionally beautiful, white Eurocentric features.
But, this isn’t a political argument as much as it is an aesthetic one. In the years Victoria’s Secret spent in exile, the culture around sexiness moved on.
Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty redefined what lingerie could mean in the public imagination, a space of genuine inclusivity and joy, where difference was the point. When the Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 show reached over 150m viewers within a day on social media in 2022, it wasn’t because it titillated as much as it did because it resonated. The women on stage didn’t feel like moving mannequins, but real, whole women with personality and specificity.
The early 2020s have been defined by a coordinated attack on feminist and queer progress: reproductive rights rolled back in the U.S. after Roe v. Wade’s overturning; Don’t Say Gay laws spreading across states; trans healthcare bans framed as moral victories; and a broader backlash against the visibility of women who fall outside conventional standards of pallatability – too old, too outspoken, too body-positive.
Against that backdrop, the return of the Victoria’s Secret show doesn’t feel innocent. Its glossy insistence on ‘traditional femininity’ – thin, white, submissive, and silent – fits neatly into a cultural moment obsessed with reclaiming lost hierarchies.
It’s the same nostalgia that fuels the rise of ‘tradwife’ influencers on TikTok, who frame domestic submission as rebellion against feminism. It’s the same logic animating right-wing pundits who call the Barbie movie ‘anti-men’ or who pine for an era when women ‘knew their place.’
In that sense, Victoria’s Secret’s revival is a macabre feature of a frightening time. The show’s exaggerated femininity once read as campy spectacle; now, in an era of politicised nostalgia, it feels almost defiant in its conservatism.
As the right-wing culture machine rails against ‘woke’ brands, the company’s return functions as a glittering safe space for those longing for a more ‘manageable’ kind of womanhood.
Even the show’s visual grammar feels like propaganda for a lost fantasy. The camera still fetishises the female body through a pre-#MeToo lens.
The irony is that the brand still calls this empowerment. It’s the same corporate sleight of hand that fueled the ‘lean-in’ feminism of the 2010s: sell women back their own objectification, but tell them it’s freedom this time.
Luckily, this time around, most of us know better than to swallow the harmful messaging.
Desire itself has diversified and popular culture now celebrates women who are messy, contradictory, and embodied – from Zendaya’s layered sexuality in Challengers to Ayo Edebiri’s awkward self-possession in The Bear.
Even pop stars like Chappell Roan and Doja Cat embody a camp, chaotic sensuality that resists neat packaging. Against this, Victoria’s Secret’s angels look like malfunctioning AI renderings of femininity: flawless, expressionless, and totally divorced from cultural reality.
In the late 1990s, Victoria’s Secret’s fantasy – the idea that being ogled could be empowering – made sense in a media landscape with few alternatives. But now, when empowerment has moved from performance to authenticity, that illusion collapses.
In the post-Trump culture-war economy, brands like Victoria’s Secret function as comfort food for those weary of ‘wokeness.’ Its return is a kind of pink-washed pushback and additional proof that corporate feminism can be mobilised in defense of the status quo.
The result is a paradox: a show that claims to celebrate female power while embodying its containment.
In 2025, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show isn’t aspirational, controversial, or even particularly sexy. It’s a relic and a soft-focus hallucination of a past America where power and beauty were synonymous with sameness. An America that’s creeping back into the frame.
The Angels may have returned, but the fantasy is dead. The only people still clinging to it are the ones afraid of what’s replaced it.
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