The Death Of The Angel: How Victoria’s Secret Misdiagnosed Its Own Illness

The walls were lined with impossibly beautiful women in black-and-white. Every teenage girl walked in wide-eyed, half-embarrassed and half-enchanted. You left smelling like “Love Spell” and believing you might someday look like Adriana Lima if you just bought the right push-up bra. That fantasy sold billions. And then they killed it. The decline of Victoria’s Secret didn’t begin with Valentina Sampaio or the first plus-size casting. It began when a corporate board mistook the opinions of the loud minority for market insight and completely overhauled the entire brand because of it. When sales dipped, there were three obvious culprits: • The branding (iconic) • The quality (poor) • The price (too high) Any rational strategist would have fixed the second or third. Instead, they demolished the first—the one thing that still worked. They killed the Angel. Like so many corporations infected with cultural guilt, and with the rise of competitors like Savage X Fenty (which, by the way, no one even talks about anymore) and Aerie, they thought: If people accuse us of being too exclusive, we must become inclusive to prove we’re good. And in doing so, they destroyed what made the company unique for decades. It’s a masterclass in misdiagnosis. A brand that confused the noise of journalists with the voice of customers. Victoria’s Secret was always an aspirational brand. A hyper-feminine showcase of genetic beauty at its finest. It’s a masterclass in misdiagnosis. A brand that confused the noise of journalists with the voice of customers. The VS Collective, their supposed “new era,” replaced models with activists and supermodels with spokespeople “known for their achievements, not their looks.” Translation: We’re ashamed of beauty now. The Angels, the women who embodied the art of being desired, were dismissed as relics of oppression. In their place, we got political soccer players, activists, and social commentators. Of course, the VS Collective quickly flopped and was never heard from again. Next, they tried to bring back the VS show, but as… a documentary? TikTok cringed in secondhand embarrassment, as somehow they managed to make Emily Ratajkowski not look like the bombshell she effortlessly is. I have no clue how that’s even possible. Even Gisele, who was stated to be part of it, dropped out before production. A good call on her part. I used to watch the Victoria’s Secret fashion show as a young girl, admiring the beautiful women and wanting to be a part of their club. The smiles, the laughter, the pink. It was peak girlhood. Yet, during last year’s show, instead of embracing it, they paid so much money to the old-school girls that they had no budget for the new set. To make matters worse, they enlisted new makeup artists instead of the tried-and-true greats. Not only that, the girls didn’t smile as they glided down the runway. Some of the most iconic Angels had high ponytails (reminiscent of a casting call), and the BTS photos looked depressing. Who wanted to be a part of that group? This year, sources say the show is about to be another shit show. Instead of scouting for new Angels, they’re casting basketball stars, plus-size models, trans models, and high-fashion runway models. It’s like they’re throwing a dart at anyone with a following from every walk of life to see if they’ll bring in eyes. Men used to buy VS bags at Christmas for their wives. In fact, that’s how the company originally started: as a place where men wouldn’t be ashamed to buy lingerie for their wives (an otherwise awkward experience). Women bought matching sets to feel like heroines in their own romantic stories. It was a rare brand that incorporated what men love and what women love to look like. Now? Ask any man if he’s been to Victoria’s Secret lately. He’ll groan, mentioning the obese mannequins and the ugliness of the barren walls. Ask women, and they’ll sigh. They’ve moved on to other e-commerce platforms because they miss the glamour that used to surround the experience of shopping in the store. When Victoria’s Secret ran “The Perfect Body” campaign a decade ago, customers complained that the models’ photos were retouched to perfection and that there is no “perfect body.” It was peak Millennial, really. Victoria’s Secret wasn’t destroyed by sexism or cancel culture. It was destroyed by self-consciousness that it could have ignored. Meanwhile, the same media outlets who condemned the Angels for being scantily clad and unattainable praised the Savage X Fenty show, which was objectively raunchier, because it featured a bunch of women of all sizes twerking. We were told the Victoria’s Secret runway was “male-centric,” yet applauded a new version that was just a smorgasbord of women being raunchier. The hypocrisy was glaring, but worse, it was boring. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and Kim Kardashian’s Skims are often cited as brands that do diversity well. Both brands are fantastic, by the way. The difference is they built from day one with genuine inclusion of different tones, textures, and body types in a market that wasn’t being served. Notably, Skims offers a wide range of sizes, from XXS to 4X and sometimes up to 5X, including a variety of colors for different skin tones. Similarly, the Skims co-founder talked about Good American (Khloé Kardashian’s brand) serving the 68% of the country who were size 16 or bigger. And Fenty Beauty finally gave Black women beauty shades that worked for their skin tone. Both companies, too, have effortlessly beautiful, forward-facing founders (Rihanna and Kim Kardashian). Victoria’s Secret tried to copy this framework without staying true to what was authentically them: an exclusive and aspirational brand. The result was a schizophrenic brand: half woke manifesto, half nostalgia rebrand. One week, Megan Rapinoe. The next, Madison Beer. One week, the e-commerce models were all sizes; the next, they were all skinny. What was going on? We’re living through an era of inclusivity obsession, where brands feel guilty for being beautiful. Victoria’s Secret wasn’t destroyed by sexism or cancel culture. It was destroyed by self-consciousness that it could have ignored. The moment it apologized for being fantasy, it ceased to be fantasy. So then, what is the point? The new show’s casting—a token collage of activists, plus-size models, nepo babies, and trans models mixed with a few old-school beauties—feels like the same pandering cocktail that tanked them before. There’s nothing wrong with aspirational beauty. Victoria’s Secret could have evolved in a way that stayed true to the exclusivity of the brand. It could have refined its products, diversified quietly, scouted gorgeous new faces, and protected the magic that made it aspirational. Instead, it tried to virtue-signal its way into relevance and lost both its men and its women in the process.