Why the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was cancelled (and its history)
Image Credit: The Style Historian
Recently, it was announced that Victoria’s Secret (VS) would be resurrecting its once heralded (and since cancelled) fashion show – a USD $26 million-to-produce event that was broadcasted on network television throughout the early 2000s.
We cannot understate the significance of the VS Fashion Show - no other fashion brand was doing this at that time.
After public controversy and its subsequent cancellation in 2019, many are left asking what the new show will give us, and can VS really re-brand itself into a modern fashion label after holding onto the early 2000s notions of sexuality, femininity and the male gaze?
And in a culture where we’re quick to judge and skim over details – is the history of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show as bad as the headlines say?
Let’s get into it.
A brief history on how the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show started
VS founders and married couple, Roy and Gaye Raymond created the first ever lingerie-only store in 1977 as a place for people to go and shop without feeling embarrassment.
By doing so, they brought lingerie into the everyday consumer homes – previously riddled with shame, and even signalled in its very own brand name.
Long believed to be about someone’s mistress – it’s actually an ode to Queen Victoria and the age of ‘refinement’, with the ‘secret’ referring to what lay hidden underneath our clothing.
(I won’t get into the full history of the brand here, but Raymond sold VS to Les Wexner in 1982 for approx. $1M USD – roughly $3.25M USD today.)
The concept of its fashion show first arrived in 1994, when Les Wexner, then CEO of parent company L Brands, came up with the idea when speaking with Chief Marketing Officer, Ed Razek. They were a fashion label, so they needed to have a fashion show.
The evolution of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
It all started out in 1995 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, and was pretty toned down. There were no angel wings and models mostly wore slips. Throughout the course of the aughts, it grew to be a spectacle with musical performances, 40lbs wings worn by “Angels” and a cast of famous models.
Image Credit: Stephanie Seymour walking in the first-ever Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 1995 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, via Getty Images.
As the early aughts brought momentum for the show, it was broadcast for the first time on national television in 2001 – but the sheer lingerie was blurred and censored.
I’d like to think this is what the show looked like originally on TV:
Image Credit: A model walking at the 2001 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, with blurred lingerie edit by The Style Historian, image via Pinterest.
During these years, the show really started to get its footing, with over the top looks, glam, a pre-Christmas seasonal time slot and musical guests.
Image Credit: Heidi Klum wearing angel wings at the 2003 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, Teen Vogue.
And in 2004, the show was cancelled following the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Super Bowl fiasco (if you don’t recall – there was a wardrobe malfunction where Janet’s nipple was shown at their half-time show performance, and it broke the public sphere).
There were calls for a ‘crackdown on indecency on tv’. Instead, the show was replaced by Angels Across America Tour, where models like Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum and Gisele Bundchen went to major cities to meet fans.
But the show’s first public controversy began in 2012 (beyond the cries that the show was too indecent for tv) – Karli Kloss wore a ‘Native-American inspired’ costume meant to depict the month of November. Following backlash, the outfit was edited out of the televised special.
Image Credit: Model Karli Kloss wearing a-since edited out costume at the 2012 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, via Fashionista.com
Why was the Victoria Secret’s Fashion Show ultimately cancelled?
We can pinpoint four main reasons why the show was cancelled in 2019, following a twenty-three reign as the biggest fashion show broadcast on network television.
· The #MeToo Movement gained substantial momentum in 2017, and women were voicing enough was enough, adding fire to whispered rumours of misconduct allegations on sets and against VS executives;
· Fashion shows Savage x Fenty by Rhianna were coming into the mainstream, noticeably highlighting people of colour and all body sizes, including transgender, queer non-binary and visibly-pregnant models;
· Parent company CEO L Brands Les Wexner had been discovered to have ties with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2019; and
· The infamous controversial comments made by Ed Razek, VS Chief Marketing Officer & architect of the VC Fashion, to Vogue about transgender and plus-size people.
As the momentum for inclusion and different beauty standards was taking over, VS resisted this change, stuck in the rigid, sexualized ideas of women from the early 2000s that had built the brand. And Ed’s comments only confirmed this in a world where people were actively looking for inclusive brands to support.
In the now infamous 2018 Vogue interview, Chief Marketing Officer Ed Razek explained,
“If you’re asking if we’ve considered putting a transgender model in the show or looked at putting a plus-size model in the show, we have. We invented the plus-size model show in what was our sister division, Lane Bryant…. We market to who we sell to, and we don’t market to the whole world.”
When asked about shifting desires/needs in the market, he responded,
“It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show?
No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special. That’s what it is.
It is the only one of its kind in the world, and any other fashion brand in the world would take it in a minute, including the competitors that are carping at us. And they carp at us because we’re the leader.”
And the subsequent apology, posted to Twitter:
Image Credit: Via X and Harper’s Bazaar,
Ed Razek soon retired following this scandal.
But where does the Victoria Secret’s Fashion Show stand today?
Following its cancellation in 2019, the brand launched a number of PR re-brand initiatives – two notable moves include:
· Founding the VS Collective in 2021, a group of female ambassadors ranging from advocates, journalists, models to ‘drive positive change’. Celebs like Hailey Bieber, Naomi Osaka, Bella Hadid, Megan Rapinoe and Priyanka Chopra are listed as members; and
· Separating from its problematic parent brand, L Brands, becoming its own public entity Victoria’s Secret & CO, in 2021.
Following VS’ announcement that it was splitting from L Brands, VS CEO admitted,
“We got it wrong. We lost relevance with the modern woman. And she told us very clearly to change our focus from how people look to how people feel — from being about what he wants to being about what she wants.”
Is it all too little too late?
Two years later, VS premiered a new ‘fashion show/documentary’ via an 85-minute Amazon film in 2023. At the time, Raul Martinez, VS’s Chief Creative Director explained
“We haven’t forgotten our past, but we’re also speaking to the present.”
According to VS, the goal of this new format ‘allows women to reclaim the narrative around what sexy looks and feels like’, following 20 artists journey towards the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (which I only assume takes place in some way at the end of the film).
I tried to watch it, but after five minutes I understood why it received a 2.6 rating on IMDB, which honestly seems generous – it’s no surprise they axed this idea and are going back to their roots.
Imagine Gigi Hadid trying to be a narrator a la David Attenborough but for models lounging in a villa… then cutting to scenes of local fashion designers in remote Nigeria – I wish I was kidding. We had to turn it off.
Since then, there’s been documentaries that have come out exposing more about the ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner, namely the Hulu doc Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons in 2022.
Although Wexner fired Epstein as his financial advisor in 2007, many speculate Epstein used his power and ties with Wexner to further his own dark agenda – even posing as a VS ‘agent’ to gain access to young models. Wexner denies any knowledge of this ever-taking place.
Is the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show even relevant today?
When the show was cancelled in 2019, it followed five years of declining viewership according to Fox Business (only 3.2 million watched in 2018, a steep drop from 10 million in 2011), in what many could assume speaks to losing significance and a changing audience.
But the brand is still clearly entrenched in Y2K beauty ideals, synonymous with airbrushed perfection, even seen referenced today in conversations online.
Image Credit: Yes, I absolutely love Bravo and Summer House. #JusticeforCiara, via Blocked by Jax.
Many online are curious about what this new show will give us, and the teasers don’t say much.
We could guess there will be wings, there will be inclusion.
But, will there be an audience?
And according to its own FAQ on what viewers can expect, VS says it’ll be a spectacle that celebrates all women. That’s it.
Will you be watching?
If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend this podcast between CBC journalist Elamin Abdelmahmoud + Vogue writer Lisa Wong Macabasco, who dig into the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and its legacy further on CBC’s The Commotion.
Until next time,
- TSH