The Return of the Victoria Secret Fashion Show; Should it Have Happened?
By Gabby Montilus
Last night marked the return of the notorious Victoria Secret Fashion Show. This fashion show originally was cancelled due to its portrayal of primarily skinny models. The lack of diverse body types angered the public and gave them a lot of bad publicity when the #MeToo movement started trending. Victoria Secret’s former parent company L Brands also received allegations of being heavily misogynistic. All of this led to the downfall of Victoria Secret and its iconic fashion show in 2019. Six years later they decided to bring it back, but many believe that this year’s show did not live up to the reputation of what these shows are known for.
Even though this show featured extremely famous models such as Kate Moss, Tyra Banks, Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid, Adriana Lima, and Alex Casani, fans still expressed many issues with the show. Victoria Secret aimed to be more “woke” in this year’s show by showing more diverse body types on the runway such as trans, plus size, and older bodies. On top of this, this year’s runway was shoppable allowing fans to see the lingerie they might want to buy on a very popular runway. Even with all of this, the issues this fashion show caused in the past can not be erased and this runway came across as a desperate attempt to do so.
Fans believed the show was boring and lacked the glitz and glam the previous shows had. To start, the well-known Victoria Secret wings, which gave these models the names of Victoria Secret Angels, were way less extravagant than in past years and were seen as cheap to the point where people compared them to wings bought from a Halloween costume store.
Some fans commented saying “Everyone’s hair is flat, no extremely tall models, the entire production is different” and This was cute but it wasn’t enough… we need to bring back the glitter runway, more lively performances!” These reviews show that even with the backlash past shows had, the Victoria Secret Fashion Show is known to display a certain look that may now be impossible to revert from. It is unknown if there will be another Victoria Secret fashion show next year, but with the responses this year’s show got, Victoria Secret is going to have to do a lot more to impress the public if they do decide to run another show.
