The Depressing Nostalgia of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

One of the more striking images from Sunday’s return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show did not come from the runway. Instead, it arrived as the camera lingered on two members of the audience, Kris Jenner, the reigning reality-show matriarch, and actor Timothée Chalamet. The two were positively beaming, there to support daughter and girlfriend, respectively, Kylie Jenner, who, despite having never appeared in the show, had been chosen to walk the runway wearing the brand’s diamond-encrusted, $50 million Fantasy Bra.

On social media, the backlash was already kicking off. Jenner, to her critics, was not a real model; the Fantasy Bra, clocking in at 4,410 white diamonds and 75.54-carat yellow diamonds, should have been reserved for a credentialed Angel. (The apparent distinction is in the contracts; Angels, unlike mere models like Jenner’s sister, are required to appear in various photo shoots and act as legacy brand ambassadors.) The event also marked the first time the garment was being featured in the runway show since 2018.

From one angle, the comments could seem critical of Victoria’s Secret. Executives, some argued, had misstepped in the selection of Jenner. But in defending the honor of a Fantasy Bra and the prestige that supposedly comes with being picked to model a clear vehicle for profit before a live audience, the brand had clearly notched another victory in its astonishing turnaround following a post-MeToo movement nosedive, both in stock prices and cultural relevance. It’s a comeback that traces the broader, booming return of similar Y2K-era relics, such as the push-up bra and strict, conservative ideas of gender norms.

In fact, Sunday’s runway spectacle, only the third since getting canceled in 2019 over mounting evidence of Lex Wexner’s unusually close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, had the eerie effect of deja vu, or as the New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman put it, as if “the past seven years didn’t happen.” Consider the final scenes of the show, which managed to put the time-warp into overdrive, as “Say You’ll Be There,” the 1996 single from the Spice Girls, played while a swarm of models delivered their final air kisses.

Were we back in the nineties? Alas no. Here we were in the regressive mess of 2026: nostalgic takes on sex appeal, women’s bodies as evening entertainment, the empty gospel of female empowerment to smooth things over.

Yet, for all the scantily clad models and overwrought musical performances, my mind kept returning to Kris Jenner and Timothée Chalamet. It was from their vantage point of momager and boyfriend that two essential elements of the Victoria’s Secret’s brand, commerce and the male gaze, seemed to braid perfectly. On a more practical level, their presence also served as a useful reminder that this was indeed taking place in 2026, as in, after a mother’s facelift, a time-bending mechanism in its own right, and after the start of a romance with Chalamet. Sure enough, come Monday morning, Victoria’s Secret’s share price surged once more.