No more angels will get their wings…VS Fashion Show ends

All the VS Angels who look forward to “getting their wings” – a company honor in the final walk down the runway may be disappointed as the famous Victoria’s Secret holiday fashion show, aired as a television special as flamboyant as an awards show, ends, with 2018 being its last runway.

While the official word by CFP Stuart Burgdoerfer was, “we will be communicating to customers, but nothing similar in magnitude to the fashion show,” other issues may have pushed the show into a quiet retirement.

Certainly the #MeToo movement has raised consciousness about women’s issues in the workplace, and the models were also employees of VS, and some had expressed their concern with promoting women in the hyper-sexy lingerie narrative. In an interview for Vogue, a statement was made by a VS representative that “there was no room for plus-size models on their runway and that he would also not cast transgender models”.

There is chatter about Leslie Wexner, CEO of L Brands, owner of VS, being a close friend of disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and that Epstein may have used Wexner’s link to Victoria’s Secret to recruit young women by promising them modeling jobs with the brand, though nothing more has come out about this at this time.

Ultimately, with the brand’s revenue declining quarter by quarter and changing societal ideas of what’s sexy, Victoria’s Secret has been in trouble for quite some time.

Fortune says sales fell 7% in the latest quarter, compared to a 2% drop during the same period a year ago. With the exception of a small rise in the first quarter of 2018, Victoria’s Secret same store sales have declined every quarter since Q4 2016.

You would be hard pressed to find a Victoria’s Secret model who will speak ill of her time as a VS runway Angel. Heidi Klum, one of the most famous VS models said, “being a Victoria’s Secret model had always been her dream”.

When Gisele Bundchen, an iconic VS model, spoke about her time there, she said that she was always trying to cover up a little with things like a tale or a set of wings…About her modeling opportunity she said, in an interview for StyleCaster, “I was certainly grateful for the opportunity and the financial security the company had given me, but I was at a different place in my life, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue working there,” she wrote. So, like any adult, she made the decision the only way she knew: by randomly choosing between two pieces of paper. “I crumpled up two small pieces of paper and placed them inside an empty teacup,” she said, explaining that she wrote the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on each,” she wrote. “I closed my eyes and set an intention: whatever piece of paper I chose would be for my highest and best self and be the right decision.”

The estimated $20million to produce the 2018 show was balanced with the lowest rating ever, a small 3.3 million people.

Model Robyn Lawlor, of Australia had taken up a petition against the show after the 2018 production, accusing VS of lack of diversity. Other models were beginning to raise their voice with similar concerns.

Rather than put themselves out there this year, when the rumbling of negativity may have built to a bottom line damaging crescendo, the company has acknowledged changing times and they’ll leave all the fantasy as a memory – for now.