The new three-part Hulu documentary series “Victoria Secret: Angels and Demons” opens with a backstage scene: the lingerie company’s annual fashion show is getting ready to kick off, and supermodels clad in skimpy underwear grin and pose for the photographers. These models, whom the lingerie brand calls Angels, are super-beautiful and young, their bodies sculpted with cascading curls and chiseled cheekbones. The Angels, in their Fantasy Bras bedazzled with thousands of diamonds and a million feathers, represent an idealized version of a fantasy world in shades of pink.
This vision was the bedrock of Victoria’s Secret for decades, until the company started to falter. Same-store sales began to slip, and the company was losing market share to competitors that offered more variety in sizes and styles. The company’s teeny-centric brand Pink also began to struggle. In the end, both brands needed a major overhaul.
In 2023, Victoria’s Secret dropped its famous Angels and rebranded as a more inclusive brand. It started to focus on younger generations, who tend to expect companies to take progressive social stances and are more willing to boycott brands that don’t do so. The shift was a success, and the company regained some of its lost momentum.
However, it didn’t fix the problems that had caused the company to lose momentum in the first place. The lack of diversity in the company’s modeling pool was still a huge problem, and in 2018, VP and CMO Ed Razek made controversial comments about transgender and plus-sized models, prompting calls for a boycott of the runway show.
The boycott call was never really about whether or not the VS models were beautiful—they were and are—but about the fact that they didn’t reflect the vast majority of women in America, who aren’t size 0 or white or able-bodied. The boycott sparked a conversation about the need for more body inclusivity in the industry, and prompted Victoria’s Secret to announce that it would include some size-inclusive models in its upcoming show.
The VS 2018 fashion show is taking place this week, and the brand has announced that it will feature Gigi Hadid, Jasmine Tookes, Barbara Palvin, Mayowa Nicholas, Behati Prinsloo, Ashley Graham, Paloma Elsesser and Devyn Garcia on the runway. The company has also included a number of curvy and plus-size models in its campaign images, which have similar overexposed lighting and editing styles as the campaigns used by the Angels in earlier years. While this move is a positive step, the company will need to do more if it wants to fully regain its former reputation as an iconic American brand.