For a brand that once dominated the lingerie world with unapologetic femininity and high-gloss glamor, Victoria’s Secret appears determined to keep testing how far it can stretch its identity before it snaps entirely.
The company’s latest announcement of the "first six Angels" for the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was meant to be a return to form — a revival of the beloved runway spectacle after years of cultural criticism and financial backsliding. Instead, it’s ignited yet another firestorm, and not without reason.
Among the names listed were legends of the VS golden age — Adriana Lima, Joan Smalls, Lily Aldridge. Names that carry the weight of the brand’s heyday. Also included were newer faces like Anok Yai and Yumi Nu, both respected in high fashion. But then came the curveball: Alex Consani, a biological male identifying as transgender, listed among the "Angels" — the very title that once symbolized the epitome of female beauty and elegance in fashion.
The reaction was swift. Not just in media circles, but in the public comment sections — those unfiltered, brutally honest corners of the internet where customers actually tell brands what they think. And what they think, overwhelmingly, is that Victoria’s Secret is playing dress-up with its brand values, again.
🪽The first six angels hitting the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2025 runway : Adriana Lima, Alex Consani, Anok Yai, Joan Smalls, Lily Aldridge & Yumi Nu #VSFashionShow pic.twitter.com/LHViPEoq8t
— Victoria’s Secret Actu (@vsactu) September 2, 2025
There’s an important distinction to make here. This isn’t a critique of Alex Consani’s modeling ability, nor a personal attack. It’s a broader objection to what Victoria’s Secret is doing with its brand — once synonymous with femininity, softness, strength, and allure — now seemingly unsure of what it stands for at all. Once it dropped its iconic Angels in 2019 and pivoted to woke iconography, the company watched its sales plummet. DEI checkboxes don’t move inventory. Product, presentation, and brand integrity do.
This latest move isn’t bold. It’s not forward-thinking. It’s recycled theater dressed in lace. The lighting, camera angles, and editing couldn’t obscure what many viewers immediately saw — and felt. A brand marketed to women, built by the labor and beauty of women, inserting a male body into one of its most coveted roles. For many longtime customers, it doesn’t feel like inclusion. It feels like erasure.
Critics weren’t just lamenting the change — they were naming names. “Where are Candice, Doutzen, Daniela, and Alessandra?” asked one commenter, listing icons who embodied the VS brand for decades. Another user captured the core frustration: “Victoria’s Secret is a brand synonymous with femininity. Highlighting masculine images in a place built on women’s labor is an injustice to women.”
The worst part? This backlash was predictable. The brand already learned this lesson the hard way. In its push to be “inclusive,” it dropped the very formula that made it a powerhouse — and consumers walked. Now, after claiming to reverse course and promising a “return to sexy,” the inclusion of Consani sends a mixed signal at best, and to many, a disingenuous one.