On October 18, the Victoria's Secret (VS) Fashion Show returned to Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two decades, bringing back every single element the brand's classic spectacles were famous for — from giant wings to pop stars performing among the supermodels. If you watched the show in the 2010s, very little of it would have surprised you.

I grew up at a time when the women on this runway were shaping the global beauty standard, but an obsession with American pop culture and the VS craze in particular passed me by. So, I have to admit, the revived show didn't stir anything in me other than the question: why has a format that seemed outdated come back almost exactly the way it was?

This year's show was held at a film studio in Culver City, on a scale that, according to creative director Adam Selman, no venue in New York could fit. Bella Hadid opened it, Adriana Lima, Candice Swanepoel, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley walked again, while Kylie Jenner wore the diamond Fantasy Bra, missing since 2018.

That was the third revival attempt. The first two shows, in 2024 and 2025, brought the format back in parts, but this one came back whole. Selman insisted it was "not a heritage show", but most of what was on the runway could have walked in 2012.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, the show, backed by glossy blockbuster-style commercials, set the beauty standard, selling a polished, disciplined femininity: tall, slim, flawless. Comfort, practicality and bodies that looked any different didn't fit that fantasy. Many girls my age measured themselves against it, and I saw what that did to their self-esteem and, for some, to their relationship with food.

By 2018 the show had its lowest viewership ever, and the brand's own words didn't help. That year, the then marketing chief of its parent company dismissed calls for a more diverse cast in an interview, explaining that the show is a fantasy. The brand cancelled it the following year.

What came next was meant to be a new chapter: the campaigns became softer, diverse bodies were finally acknowledged, and in 2023, VS swapped the runway show for a film meant to present it as a brand that champions different women and gives female creatives from around the world a stage, rather than selling one ideal. 

That was a reasonable adjustment, but none of it felt genuine to me. It just looked less like a change of values and more like an attempt to sell the same underwear to an audience that had changed. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who wasn't persuaded by the new narrative: some critics said the special repeated the rhetoric of inclusivity without having much behind it.

Then came the recalibrations. The 2024 revival got mixed reviews, with many fans of the old show feeling it had lost what made it special. In 2025 the brand adjusted again, and this year it stopped adjusting altogether.

Of course, you could put it down to nostalgia: fashion has been circling back to the early 2000s for a while now, and a lingerie show from the same era fits right in. But trends come back as clothes. What came back here is a body ideal, and that is a very different thing to revive.

The three shows together make it look like VS is trying to have it both ways, pleasing two audiences at once. They give wings, blowouts, diamonds and the original Angels to those who never let go of the old ideal, while those who expect a brand to reflect real women get mothers, women in their forties, a few different sizes, an all-female line-up of performers and even a new Angel chosen through a nationwide casting call streamed on YouTube. 

The Fantasy Bra sums it up. The item whose job is to make the ordinary sets in the shop feel like part of the same world wasn't worn by one of the brand’s models, but rather by a celebrity with hundreds of millions of followers, and that says a lot about who the show is now built for. Online reach is one of today's main sales drivers, so the show's key piece seems to go to whoever brings the biggest audience. On top of that, Kylie Jenner isn't a neutral choice. For an enormous group of young people she stands for an updated beauty ideal — one that is often no more achievable than the old one.

To be fair, the inclusion of different women does look like progress, but even inclusion can backfire. 

Take the postpartum models on the runway. Barbara Palvin and Elsa Hosk walked six weeks and three months after giving birth respectively and, let's be honest, looked absolutely stunning. Palvin even spoke about it with real modesty, saying that in the US most women have to go back to work after six weeks anyway, so she was simply doing what everyone else does.

There is nothing wrong with that, but is it an accurate representation? After the show, my Threads feed was filled with posts from women comparing their own bodies after birth to Barbara's and Elsa's. For many, the months after having a baby bring real changes to the body, and seeing a model on a lingerie runway weeks later feels rather like one more standard to fall short of.

And for VS, this isn't new. In 2012, Adriana Lima walked the show eight weeks after giving birth, and it was celebrated in the same way. Elsa Hosk has recalled that back then, Angels planned their pregnancies around the show so they could be back on the runway in time. Something has shifted since: in 2025, Jasmine Tookes opened the show nine months pregnant. But while the bump is now welcome, the body after birth is still presented as a quick bounce-back, so motherhood has a place on this runway, as long as it stays flawless.

Yes, the cast is broader than it was in the 2010s, and that matters. But the vast majority of women on that runway are still very slim. Diversity has been added around the edges, but the centre has stayed the same.

The show was once defended with the word fantasy, and it is fine for fashion to be one. Nobody expects to wear wings or a $50 million diamond bra to work, but the VS fantasy isn't just about the clothes. It still puts a certain body standard on display, and that is the part women take home with them. 

In 2026, after everything we have learned about what that image did to so many women, some viewers clearly still want it. I am not sure anyone needs it, apart from the company behind it. From a business point of view, aspiration sells, and a body most women can’t have is as aspirational as it gets. So it isn’t that the old format turned out to be fine. The brand just found a way to sell it to both sides: the fantasy for those who missed it, and just enough inclusivity for those who would otherwise object. The wings and diamonds are back, and so is the standard — it just hides behind a longer cast list.