Victoria's Secret Built Its Comeback on Star Power. Now Its Own Fans Are Asking Where the Models Went.

Victoria's Secret's revived Fashion Show has leaned hard into a strategy built less on runway craft and more on reach: opening casting to the public through a social-media search called "Angels Among Us" that drew more than 100,000 applicants, and funneling access through its VS & PINK Creator Program, which has grown past 16,000 members who earn higher commissions and event invites for posting about the brand. "Anyone can go viral and drive widespread impact, regardless of their follower count," said Elizabeth Preis, the company's chief marketing and customer officer, framing the approach as a hedge against relying on a handful of big names.

That strategy is exactly what's driving the backlash. Longtime Angel Romee Strijd, who had walked the show every year since 2019, said on TikTok she had been cut; her agency said casting directors "thought she wouldn't fit the show this year," without further explanation. Fellow Angels Frida Aasen and Lais Ribeiro were also left off the lineup, while influencers Quenlin Blackwell and Gabriela Moura made the cut, alongside Amelia Gray, whose casting drew its own round of "nepo baby" criticism online given her parents, Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin. One Reddit user summed up the mood bluntly, accusing the brand of being "full of influencers and nepo babies" while having "rejected real supermodels."

The irony marketers keep pointing to is that Victoria's Secret spent decades manufacturing supermodel-level fame for its Angels, and is now leaning on nostalgia for that very fame while edging the Angels themselves out of the show that built them. CEO Hillary Super has described the strategy as a long game, aiming to build the show into "an ongoing franchise" rather than a once-a-year spectacle, which may explain the math: a broad creator network reliably generates more content (1,700-plus pieces from the 2025 show alone) than a handful of famous faces ever could. Whether that trade, reach over the Angels fans grew up with, pays off commercially is still an open question. Whether it costs the brand some of the mystique that made the Angels famous in the first place is the one its own fans seem to have already answered.

Source: Glossy

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →