Victoria’s Secret leaned into some of its most recognizable imagery at its 2026 fashion show on Sunday, bringing back the Angels, elaborate wings and the Fantasy Bra while revisiting glamorous lingerie and slip dresses.
Kylie Jenner made her Victoria’s Secret runway debut wearing the diamond-covered Fantasy Bra, which returned after an eight-year absence.
The revival comes five years after Victoria’s Secret retired its Angels amid a sweeping effort to reposition the brand, but creative chief Adam Selman insists the company is not simply looking backward.
Newsweek reached out to Victoria's Secret via email for comment on Monday.
For Simeon Siegel, retail analyst and senior managing director at Guggenheim Securities, the bigger challenge has been restoring enthusiasm around a brand that customers continued to shop even as its cultural standing suffered.
“People devalued the brand, but they still shopped it,” Siegel told Newsweek, describing the challenge as one of “relevance rather than existence.”
That effort comes as business improves. Victoria’s Secret reported $1.611 billion in second-quarter net sales, up 10 percent year-over-year, and subsequently raised its full-year sales forecast.
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Victoria’s Secret retired its Angels in 2021 and launched the VS Collective as it sought to modernize following criticism of its narrow beauty ideals and corporate culture.
Then-CEO Martin Waters said that the company had been “too slow to respond” to a changing world and needed to shift from focusing on “what men want” toward “what women want,” The New York Times reported at the time.
The Angels Are Back
Five years after Victoria’s Secret dramatically changed course, some of its most famous symbols were unmistakably present in Los Angeles on Sunday.
The show marked the event’s first return to the city in 19 years and brought together both familiar faces and newcomers.
Longtime Victoria’s Secret stars Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio and Candice Swanepoel took part, while Rosie Huntington-Whiteley returned for her first Victoria’s Secret appearance in 16 years. Elsa Hosk was back on its runway after an absence of almost a decade.
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Familiar touches from the show’s past also returned, including elaborate wings, glamorous lingerie and vintage-inspired slip dresses. The brand reissued the dresses after learning that customers collected older versions.
Yet Selman rejected the idea that this was simply a nostalgia exercise.
“This is not a heritage show,” Selman said, per W Magazine. Instead, he described the challenge as balancing two eras: “We’re trying to thread the needle between the old and the new.”
That approach included Solange Omon, who won the brand's YouTube casting series "Angels Among Us." The nationwide search invited women to compete for a place in the fashion show and a contract with IMG Models.
The Fantasy Bra Makes Its Comeback
Perhaps the clearest indication that Victoria’s Secret is willing to reclaim its old theatricality came with the Fantasy Bra.
The diamond-covered piece returned after eight years, with Jenner making a surprise runway appearance to model it as boyfriend Timothée Chalamet and mother Kris Jenner watched from the front row.
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Bella Hadid opened the seasonal-themed show, which moved through spring, summer, autumn and winter. Lace wings and corsetry appeared during the autumn segment, while winter brought fur and silver-accented looks.
Music remained part of the spectacle too. Megan Thee Stallion, Katseye and Megan Moroney performed, while Tate McRae debuted her new single “Housewife” dressed in shimmering red lingerie.
Rather than concealing the Victoria’s Secret of old, the company appeared to be selectively restoring some of the imagery that made its fashion show a pop culture event in the first place.
Victoria's Secret Once Said the Old Formula Had to Change
In 2021, Victoria’s Secret replaced the Angels with the VS Collective, whose original members included soccer star Megan Rapinoe, actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas and models Paloma Elsesser and Adut Akech.
The overhaul followed years of falling market share and criticism surrounding the brand’s limited portrayal of beauty and femininity. Waters said at the time that he did not consider the Angels “culturally relevant.”
Victoria’s Secret began broadening its products and marketing, including introducing nursing bras and featuring a pregnant model in a Mother’s Day campaign.
The 2026 show suggests the company no longer views modernization and its old visual identity as mutually exclusive. Selman framed the strategy as making space for both former Victoria’s Secret stars and women entering its world for the first time.
The Business Is Growing
Victoria’s Secret's shift back toward its signature glamour comes as its business is strengthening.
The company reported second-quarter net sales of $1.611 billion, up 10 percent from the same period in 2025, while comparable sales increased 9 percent. It subsequently raised its full-year sales forecast to between $7.1 billion and $7.18 billion.
Siegel told Newsweek that Victoria’s Secret has something many companies do not: a natural license to make sexiness central to its identity.
“Given what they sell, VS [Victoria's Secret] has permission, and frankly the expectation, to be sexy in a way that other companies don’t. When they stepped away from that positioning, the business suffered,” he said.
Siegel added CEO Hillary Super and her management team have “done the work to reclaim their authority on sexy” while still listening to what consumers want.
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Siegel sees a potential financial benefit if that strategy strengthens how shoppers view the brand. He pointed to pricing as one example, distinguishing between companies raising prices alongside competitors and those that have strengthened their brands enough to command higher prices through their own actions.
“The former fades, the latter has legs,” he said.
For Victoria’s Secret, he described a chain reaction in which renewed cultural relevance could ultimately support a stronger business.
“Improved cultural relevance leads to stronger brand perception, which leads to permission to raise prices, which leads to a healthier overall business,” Siegel said.
That assessment puts the fashion show's return to glamour in a different light. Rather than simply reviving Victoria’s Secret's past, the strategy is testing whether the company can make some of its most recognizable characteristics valuable again in the present.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Anthony Murray and Ben Kelly.