Victoria secret runway show 2021 series#

Alongside a more-than-questionable ethos on sizing, the doc cites CEO Wexner’s close links to Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein’s attendance at the first-ever VS Fashion Show and continued association with the brand.

Victoria secret runway show 2021 series#

If you’re interested in the controversies around the brand, HBO’s documentary series Angels and Demons, released last July, offers all the often-gruesome details. In 2019, it may not be surprising to hear, the show was cancelled, and Razek eventually resigned. For Razek, this fantasy could not include diversity, as he specifically spoke against the possibility of ever casting a transgender model. Despite the hits, VS Chief Marketing Officer Ed Razek stuck to his guns during an interview with Vogue in the same year, describing how VS was promoting a ‘fantasy’. Based around a model of inclusive and diverse womanhood, models like Hadid spoke of their empowerment when walking in the shows, citing it as the first time they’d felt ‘truly empowered’ walking in lingerie. In recent years, the success of marketing to a range of body-types is no more evident than in the launch of Savage X Fenty in 2018. As brands like Aerie shifted their marketing in line with a slowly more inclusive turning-tide, the casting of the VS shows and campaigns remained unchanged.

Reactionary campaigns cast models of more sizes, including the viral #ImNoAngel shoot featuring a young Ashley Graham.

If you were receiving a call-back from an ‘Angel’ casting, according to research, you were most likely to be 5’10” and a size 6.ĭespite their huge success, as the 2010s rolled on, culture shifted away from the idea of women needing to aspire to a singular body type. VS marketing remained firmly built around the image of a singular body-type. What never got bigger however – was the scope of their model choice. Known for their elaborate staging and international performers, they gained momentum in the late 1990s, with the shows growing in size and scale every year. From there, the careful cultivation of the image of Victoria’s Secret – that would continue for the next 40 years – had begun.įor most, our exposure to VS has been through the circus of their annual catwalks, fronted by the Bella Hadid’s and Kendall Jenner’s of the modelling world. American businessman Les Wexner took over from the 1977 original founders, and the character of ‘Victoria’ was invented as a classy British brand ambassador. In its first form, Victoria’s Secret was founded as a catalogue to save a man’s embarrassment of gifting lingerie. With the likes of Lizzo publicly speaking out against the re-brand on the grounds of ‘too little too late’, we investigate what’s making people so angry. This week it was announced that the VS Fashion Show would be returning after a four-year break. To some, it’s a paragon of female empowerment led by some of the biggest supermodels of the last few decades – to others, an out-of-touch symbol of unattainable body standards drenched in sordid controversy. With the voiceover of a noughties Victoria’s Secret advert ringing in our ears, in 2023 you’d have to be living under a culture-void rock to be unaware of one of the biggest fashion brands of the twenty-first century. “First there was the miracle, then came angels”.