Victoria’s Secret is betting that the generation raised on body positivity—not “heroin chic”—is ready to reclaim its famously glittering runway.
The Gen Z customer watching the new version of the show today didn’t grow up with the body image trauma of the 2000s like millennials did. She was raised by a Gen X mom who tried not to pass on her own body issues, who wanted her daughter to be “strong and unbothered by all that noise,” Super notes. Gen Z can appreciate the fun of the Victoria’s Secret Angels without necessarily seeing them as aspirational—or triggering.
That shift in attitude is central to Victoria’s Secret’s comeback strategy under Super, who calls the company “the biggest transformation opportunity in retail.” In October 2025, she watched a year of work culminate in the brand’s revived fashion show at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios. “Lights, Camera, Angels,” flashed on the screen before the room went dark. The show opened with model Jasmine Tookes, ethereal in gold wings and cradling her nine-months pregnant belly—a body that would never have appeared on the runway in the brand’s earlier era.
The crowd loved longtime Angels like Adriana Lima, now in her mid-forties and a mother of five; next-gen supers Bella and Gigi Hadid; curve models including Ashley Graham and Precious Lee; and athletes like WNBA star Angel Reese and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee.
For Super, the renewed wings, sequins, and towering heels aren’t a retreat from progress but a recalibration. “I don’t think, as women, we ever stopped wanting to feel beautiful or sexy or powerful in our own skin,” she says. “But we want to define that. We don’t want someone else defining that for us.”
