The men behind Victoria’s Secret

It’s a brand everyone knows. It’s the shop you’d beg your mum to take you into the moment you hit puberty. But throughout our adolescence, something sinister was happening behind the scenes. After growing up watching the shows, and the evidence of projecting unrealistic body standards on young girls, the show was cancelled after 2018, then reimagined for 2023, but why?

The first Victoria’s Secret show debuted in the Plaza Hotel, NYC, 1995 and an empire was built. In 1999, the term ‘angels’ was formulated with the use of wings on icon Tyra Banks on her catwalk. With this, more iconic supermodels became associated with the shows such as Gisele Bündchen, Heidi Klum, and the latest Hadid Sisters. By 2005, the catwalk became televised and featured some of the largest pop artists – Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Weeknd, etc. Each show, one lucky model had the opportunity to wear the most expensive bra in the world – the ‘Fantasy Bra’ worth over $15 million. The show become something millions around the globe hyped and dialled into every year.

However, what the show was doing to female viewers was significant. In 2014, the company released a new campaign called ‘The Perfect “Body”’ featuring 10 of its catwalk models, with the exact same body-type – thin, thigh-gaps, and just the right amount of boob. The company openly profited off of young girls’ insecurities from the unrealistic body expectation they enforced. 

As each show passed, there was an increasing decline in viewers as people protested the morals of the company. Following ‘The Perfect “Body”’ campaign, in 2015, a protester took to the catwalk in demonstration of the anti-fur movement. Controversy after controversy, the brand was struggling to keep their head above water. 

Shortly after this, the angels had their last walk in 2018. The same year Razek grabbed a young model’s crotch minutes before she was meant to walk. The show was to be over indefinitely, as the company went silent. In 2022, a 3-part documentary titled ‘Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons’, exposing the very-real assaults that took place since the 90s. The past of Ed Razek and Les Wexner were delved into, and their abuse of power. The powerful men had proven ties to sexual offender Jeffery Epstein through continuous business deals, real estate, and finances. Epstein was accused of using their link to have unlimited access to young women. 

Former PR lead of Victoria’s Secret, Casey Crowe Taylor describes the abuse as “almost brainwashing” as the models were threatened their careers if they spoke out. Model Andi Muise has openly discussed her denying Razek’s advances, and subsequently being blacklisted in the model field. Crowe Taylor also went on to recall Razek saying, “If I had a dollar for every time a sexual harassment case came across my email, I’d be rich”. Of course, this was denied by Razek. 

Models had been assaulted and abused, and the company’s corrupt idea of beauty had finally been addressed. The show was not conducted safely, and the models did not reflect any sense of diversity. Even their black models were forced to straighten their hair to comply with their standards of beauty.

5 years after the last show, Victoria’s Secret announced a rebrand – a show debuting their new take on beauty in September 2023. The new brand vision was shown in Manhattan, on the 6^th September. There was no show, no runway, no theatrics. The audience were greeted by Gigi Hadid introducing the 12-minute trailer for the new 1.5 hour ‘World Tour’ film (released on the 26^th September). The trailer revealed the ‘tour’ follows 20 creatives in 4 cities: Lagos, Nigeria; London, England; Tokyo, Japan; Bogotá, Columbia. Featuring performances of Doja Cat, the film shows the creatives producing the unique pieces for their ‘show’. Following the trailer, Naomi Campbell recited a poem written by a Nigerian writer and artist, Eloghosa Osunde. The event itself on the 6^th September was completely muted in comparison to Victoria’s Secret’s past shows. One critic who attended (Hanna Flanagan, The Cut) even went on to say, “The Victoria’s Secret show could have been an email”. The event was a political attempt of the company to create a new brand image and voice. 

The video and featured women in the event conveyed women of all races, shapes and sizes: transgender woman DJ Honey Dijon, South-Sudanese model Adut Akech just being 2 examples. The company have made a clear attempt to represent real women, with a large diversity of models to right their wrongs. The internet has split opinions on the company’s attempts: on one hand, it is amazing they are doing something to change, on the other, it is too late, women have already permanently skewed ideas of beauty, and this was an attempt to earn a profit. Feminist activists like Emily Ratajkowski and Julia Fox have faced backlash for being tied to the rebrand. It’s unknown for now whether Victoria’s Secret will ever be as successful, and whether they can rewrite their past of 2 billionaire male predators.