The 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show: It's Voluminous, it's Shiny, it's Sexy.

Selman takes back the VS Fashion Show.

Posing for a Victoria’s Secret campaign, early 2000s Angels were the it-girl celebrities, defining pop-culture trends, and acting as the influencers of the time with sponsorships like their promotion with Virgin American Airlines. (Allure Magazine | Getty Images)

The air is tainted with shimmery vanilla body spray. Models are smudging their eyeliner and adjusting their push-up bras. A thick layer of hairspray cements blowouts. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is sexiness staged in 12-foot tall wings and anything but demure clothing, notorious for its bombshells and extravagant production. 

The show, hosted each October, has previously brought more than a billion of dollars annually to the company. However, following rising competition and inclusivity scandals, the show took a 6-year hiatus before reemerging in 2024. 

The fashion show’s hiatus was a part of the brand’s years-long identity crisis. According to Bloomberg press reports, last year’s sales were $6.2 billion, compared to $7.8 billion at their 2016 peak. Scandals like the “Perfect Body” campaign, interviews promising to never cast plus-size or trans models, and inappropriate conduct at the hands of head executives left the company with an outdated brand message. After peaking in the early 2000s, Victoria's Secret has seen declining sales and viewership. 

Since then, Victoria’s Secret has lost much of its allure. What once defined pop culture is now seemingly taboo. Societal norms defining beauty and sexiness evolved to place a bigger value on diversity in body types, skin colors, and gender identities— of which Victoria’s Secret refused to include. Today, their main competitors include Savage x Fenty and Aerie, praised for their inclusivity, body positivity, and comfort. 

This year's runway took over Brooklyn, featuring returning Angels like Adriana Lima and Gigi Hadid, as well as new stars like Suni Lee and Devon Anok. Despite struggling to determine its role in the evolving lingerie industry, new creative direction brought re-branded nostalgia and sexiness fans desperately needed.

Showing off her baby-bump, Jasmine Tookes expects her second child, marking one of the few times a model has ever walked a runway pregnant, let alone the VS fashion show. (Harper’s Bazaar | Getty Images).

The runway was Adam Selman’s debut as Victoria’s Secret’s creative director. Selman is a clever hire— formerly helming Savage x Fenty and curating performance clothing for Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. On Vogue’s Run-Through podcast in early October, Selman promised a “less idealized version of sexy and more a range of what sexy could be: playful, joyful, and fun…I wanna see women having fun.”

The first sign that this year’s show, and Victoria’s Secret rebrand, might be different was when Jasmine Tookes opened the catwalk. Tookes came on in her third trimester, donning a custom gold macrame dress, shell detailing, and crystal wings. This is the first time a pregnant woman walked the show, let alone opened it. She did so with confidence, grace, and sex appeal. 

According to @DataButMakeItFashion, the 2025 show rose in popularity by 31% compared to the 2024 show. Likewise, current revenue trends show a positive trajectory for next year, including sales.

Selman’s new vision for Victoria's Secret aimed to increase inclusivity and generate an image geared towards women. The key difference between past years’ runways and today’s was the inclusion of a diverse range of models in terms of size, age, and identity. This included curve models like Ashley Graham, trans models Alex Consani and Valentina Sampaio, Olympic gymnast Suni Lee and WNBA player Angel Reese (the first athletes to walk), and industry icons in their 50s like Kate Moss and Carla Bruni. Through this, Selman offered a broader "ideal of sexiness” beyond the rigidity that previous shows were criticized for.

So what is sexy today? Even though a “new ideal of sexiness” was present, the show did not look entirely different from the late 2000s. The formula for sexiness is still the same: a push-up bra, a thong, black stockings, stilettos, and confidence– no matter what a model looks like.

Strutting down the runway Ashley Graham shows off the Magic Hour collection, one of five total collections from the show, stunned in a sparkly laced matching black set, paired with a feather trail and wings. (Vogue Australia | Getty Images).

Women want to feel sexy, but they do not and should not do it for the male gaze. Victoria’s Secret lingerie formed its brand around sex appeal; 20 years ago, lingerie was associated with seductiveness and objectification. However, today lingerie is an appreciation of all bodies, thereby emphasizing individual confidence. Rather than relying solely on identical and thin models, Selman presents a diverse range of models with the same sensual presence but with a newfound playfulness and conviction. Selman’s runway is one where all models can have fun and feel comfortable. He sought what women want to wear and how they want to wear it—not how men want to see women.
What made Selman’s show particularly captivating compared to last year was not only his emphasis on the female gaze, but also nostalgia. Over the past couple years, a fascination with past decades and nostalgia has overtaken the media. In a world of chaos, many find comfort in what they perceive as simpler times. Trends’ infatuation with the baby tee, fluctuations between skinny and baggy jeans, and the revival of runway icons like the Balenciaga Le City Bag or Chloé’s beloved Paddington bag are coming back straight from the 2000s. Selman brought back Angels donning the same wings and pink-white striped robes from 20 years ago. He also brought other forms of nostalgia to the runway—for the first time, classic comforts can be sexy. New concepts of casual-sexy made its first appearance: low-rise jeans, cropped tees, fur hats–everything the cool girls are wearing but with a thong and hot pink bra peaking out.

Capturing Gigi Hadid (right), dressed in the iconic striped robe, and Lila Moss (left), styled in Seldan’s vision of comfortable-nostalgia, demonstrates the duality of on-runway and off-runway looks, and the importance of the runway’s backstage content in setting anticipation for the show. (Vogue | Huy Luong).

With a balanced approach to inclusivity and deliberate nods to the original show's spectacle, Selman proved Victoria's Secret could still remain at its core sexy outside of the male gaze. Although the brand took a hiatus of turmoil and controversy, creative direction took what worked– nostalgia and big blowouts– and what did not–misogyny–, learning from past mistakes. 

Safe to say, if anyone can still sell sexy, it is Victoria’s Secret.

Catch every look in the show HERE!