Gigi Hadid walks the runway during the 2024 Victoria's Secret fashion show. Photo: AFP
The wings were there: faux feathered, quilted, tulle, tinsel and star-spangled. So were the crystal bustiers and bras; the lacy thongs and boudoir silks.
So were the superstars: Lisa, hopping off a motorcycle and hip thrusting in little bits of leather; Tyla, shimmying in hot pants; Cher, in sparkling cargo pants and a corset.
And so were the supermodels, almost all of ’em: Gigi and Bella Hadid, Paloma Elsesser, Joan Smalls, Ashley Graham, Valentina Sampaio, Kate Moss and her daughter, Lila.
Even Eva Herzigova and Carla Bruni, the 56-year-old former first lady of France, strutting down the runway in a lace body stocking.
Even, especially, Tyra Banks, in leggings, a silver waist cincher and a cape.
All the ingredients were there for the rebrand of the rebrand of the Victoria’s Secret show, six years after the whole shebang was cancelled under a cloud of shame and in the wake of #MeToo.
That was when the world suddenly woke up to the fact that what had been billed as a camp spectacle of controversial kitsch was actually complicit in creating a culture that prioritised a certain body type over all others
Also, not forgetting how it treated women simply as vehicles of male fantasy (Naughty Santas! Naughty lion tamers! Naughty Rob Roys!)
And that was when the lingerie giant that had successfully branded women-in-underwear as “angels” embarked on an extended period of shrinking market share, soul-searching, corporate reorganisation and public pledges to devote itself to female empowerment.
It was an about-face so extreme and hard to swallow that the world actually started calling for the return of the wings.
So Victoria's Secret obliged. But in a fashion show in which, the voice-over before the show announced, “the women hold the reins”. Where “on the runway, it’s all about the women”.
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Was it?
Only if you still buy into the idea that every woman shares a similar fantasy, which involves a not-so-secret desire to playact as a present in a giant bow, waiting to be, literally, unwrapped.
Yes, there were more body types on the runway, including trans bodies, than there had been in the past and more women of a variety of ages.
Everything was shoppable during the livestream, meaning that the actual lingerie was more accessible than absurdist (there was no fantasy diamond bra).
There were even some pajama bottoms and a sheer bias-cut slip dress or two from designer Joseph Altuzarra.
Almost all of the models got wings, or at least a robe with a train, rather than some of the more egregious accessories of the earlier shows.
Many of those wings looked, like the undies themselves, easier to wear than the old 30-pound versions. But a lot of them also looked as if they had been bought at the Halloween store down the street. And there is a difference between celebrating real physical diversity and celebrating people whose fame is greater than any size.
Maybe it was the smoke machine, maybe it was the pink confetti that rained down from the ceiling at the finale, maybe it was model Doutzen Kroes getting her crystal-strapped stiletto stuck in the runway, but in the end the whole thing seemed less like a step forward than a hokey high school reunion.
A gathering of the formerly most popular, dressed up in the finery of yesteryear, reliving a moment that had taken on, in the haze of nostalgia or the real complications of the outside world (or just the disco lighting), a deceptively rosy pink glow.
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But it also prompted the same reaction that seeing a room full of people in their old prom dresses does: What were we thinking?
At this point, no matter how it is framed or who is behind the curtain, the Victoria’s Secret show is simply a relic of another time.
That doesn’t mean that women can’t have fun with lingerie – or, indeed, with Victoria's Secret products – but that this particular way of displaying it should be retired. There’s a distorted history that lies under the lace that cannot really be erased.
If there’s one thing that really isn’t a secret, it’s that parading scantily clad bodies, no matter what size or age, down a runway is simply not about empowerment. It’s about objectification – even if it’s equal opportunity objectification.
And that there are as many fantasies and definitions of sexy as there are people in the world and that many of them (maybe most of them) don’t involve wings. – ©2024 The New York Times Company
