Brooklyn — At Steiner Studios inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Victoria’s Secret staged a return calibrated for nostalgia and for a more edited present, a spectacle whose lighting cues and live edits were tuned as much for phones as for the front row. The timing matched a seasonal silhouette reset that has been building in Paris, a shift our desk traced through a quiet move toward structure and line. The night would later spill into an after-party lab, but the intent was clear from the opening frames: a runway engineered as broadcast, a broadcast engineered as commerce, and a brand trying to square an old fantasy with new realities.
The program announced its thesis early. Company materials confirmed an all-female performer slate featuring Missy Elliott, Karol G, Madison Beer and Twice, and a 7 p.m. Eastern livestream across platforms that treated the runway as shareable chapters. The stagecraft and the stream reinforced the same idea: if this is entertainment, it is also a system built for distribution.
Old formula, new faces
The cast blended continuity with revision. Veterans Adriana Lima and Joan Smalls walked alongside Ashley Graham, while Paloma Elsesser and Alex Consani signaled a broader frame for the brand’s house image. That balance, familiar yet adjusted, tracked with independent roundups that read the night as reassurance with edits across the roster.
Two athlete debuts turned casting into argument. WNBA forward Angel Reese stepped out in rose-themed lingerie and engineered wings, a first for a professional athlete at this show, as confirmed by the Associated Press. Her cameo sat neatly inside a crossover our culture desk has mapped for months, a court-to-catwalk channel that now moves from tunnel cameras to the pink carpet.
Olympic gold medalist Sunisa Lee joined the PINK interval, turning a house walk into a gymnastic-adjacent set piece. Local coverage in Minnesota underlined the symbolism of that crossover and its reception in the hall, reported by MPR News.
The opener that changed the temperature
Jasmine Tookes opened the show while visibly pregnant, in gold-toned pieces with light-catching structure. The room paused, then cheered. The image ricocheted across picture desks within minutes, with ABC News publishing photos that captured the tonal shift the moment brought to the evening.
What “sexy” looks like now
Behind the sequins, the edit was the story. Since taking the creative helm this year, Adam Selman has emphasized construction over clutter and an embrace of bodies as they are. On the runway, corsetry flexed rather than pinched, wing joints were engineered for movement, and appliqués mapped the ribcage instead of burying it. Interviews and show notes described a designer treating heritage as raw material, not fixed script, as W detailed.
The beauty direction followed suit. The teased, beachy wave gave way to sleeker blowouts and luminous skin calibrated for 4K capture, choices that photographed consistently on a jumbotron and a phone screen, noted by WWD. As silhouettes sharpened, the wider calendar offered a parallel script. Paris has been moving toward engineering and clarity, with power in the line rather than the flourish, a current we traced in a workwear-laced New York mood and in the Paris shows’ turn toward shoulder and structure.
The platform-era runway
The show was built to be watched everywhere at once. Shot for instant replay, it rolled out in modules, from a rose-garden fantasy to a black-on-black corridor of clean lines, from a PINK interval with hoodies and sneakers to a closing brigade of crystal. Music cues stitched the modules into clips designed to travel. Performance and photo packages appeared within hours, multiplying the night into a weekend of shareable moments, as Billboard’s gallery made plain.
The clip economy that surrounds this franchise extends beyond lingerie. Culture coverage this year has traced a loop in which surprise drops and miniature fandoms reward the seven-second pause. The runway leaned into that language, rewarding the freeze-frame as much as the long shot, a dynamic that echoes our look at the miniature-collectible boom and the churn that powers it.
After the runway, the city
Once the lights dimmed, the story moved into rooms lined with cameras. Models and performers delivered a second act of looks, from sheer columns to silvered jersey and leather minis, with denim formalized by crystal mesh. Arrivals and exits extended the runway’s thesis into the city, an after-hours laboratory of camera-proof choices.
The choreography from soundstage to sidewalk has been a feature of the season. Across New York, the most persuasive clothes are built to hold shape under unflattering light and to carry a day into a night. That thread aligns with a workwear angle New York favored, now refracted through sequins and slip dresses.
A spectacle with a shadow
The show’s pre-hiatus years remain part of the backdrop. Exclusionary casting, corrosive commentary and proximity to scandal still sit in public memory. A more critical lens has asked whether the new inclusivity is posture or proof. A cooler read from outside the brand pressed for judgment over time, including who is centered and on what terms, as the New York Times assessed. On this night, the case arrived in images, from a pregnant opener to a professional athlete claiming wings, to a gymnast rewriting a house style.
Segments built for virality
The evening thought in chapters because that is how the audience consumes it. One sequence leaned into romance, another into precision, a third into athleisure, a finale into pure sparkle. A K-pop set detonated on schedule and doubled as a clip factory for days, as Harper’s Bazaar documented.
The business beneath the sequins
This remains a high-production commercial masked as pageant, its halo reaching into the holiday corridors that loom on retail calendars. Shoppable streams, backstage beauty credits and capsule drops timed to the broadcast window turn attention into orders. In that calculus, casting is strategy as much as symbol, set lists are merchandising, and a New York soundstage is not just a stage but a signal.
Editing the myth
The brand offered a controlled rewrite rather than a repudiation of its iconography. Engineering conceded little to spectacle, and spectacle yielded more to engineering. The camera still loved wings and glinting skin. It was asked to love other frames as well, including muscle, maternity and a quieter kind of glamour. Whether that holds will depend on repetition and proof between shows, from who is hired and who is spotlighted to what the products look like away from a light rig.
The closing tableau
The finale read like a thesis in miniature. Performers waved into the lens. Models looped through glitter. Wings arced like parentheses around a promise. The question, at least for now, is not whether a single night can resolve the contradictions. It is whether the work between cycles can keep the memory and the ambition in the same frame.
