Victoria’s Secret recruits familiar, supermodel faces for new ‘Icon’ campaign

 

Victoria’s Secret is reuniting some of the most classic supermodels from its heyday, bringing Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell, Adriana Lima, and Candice Swanepoel together in a new campaign.

The lingerie brand, hoping to return to form after a number of turbulent years and a re-branding attempt, has recruited some of its famous faces — formerly known as Victoria’s Secret Angels — to help launch a new bra and underwear collection called The Icon.

Bündchen, Lima, and Swanepoel were part of the long-running “Angels” brand, which the company retired in 2021 as part of its rebrand. (All three worked as “Angels” for years in campaigns and in the brand’s famed Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show — and all wore the show’s signature “Fantasy Bra” on occasion.) It later launched campaigns featuring ambassadors called the VS Collective, including celebrity reps including soccer star Megan Rapinoe and actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

Starring alongside the returning supermodels in the new “Icon” campaign are models Adut Akech, Hailey Bieber, Paloma Elsesser, Sui He, and Emily Ratajkowski, who have all either previously walked in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show or joined its VS Collective.

The campaign images, a mix of classic black-and-white and color portraits, were taken by Swedish fashion photographer Mikael Jansson.

Adut Akech, Paloma Elsesser and Hailey Bieber are part of the all-star cast.

Courtesy Victoria's Secret

While the new collection promises “first-of-its-kind lifting and shaping technology” in a new push-up demi bra, according to its press release, it also serves to tease the return of the fashion show after a four-year hiatus. The Tour, a reworked runway event, will debut this fall, and though details are still scant, the brand is teasing a star-studded lineup — and promising that some of the models appearing in this new campaign will walk the show.

Victoria’s Secret previously canceled the fashion show in 2019 after 24 years, amid historically low viewership and following backlash for comments made by Ed Razek, former chief marketing officer of its parent company L Brands, about their exclusion of trans models. It has also seemingly struggled with modernizing its sexy-above-all brand identity as other lingerie lines — including Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty — have joined the sector, offering inclusive sizing and diverse representation on the runway.

“It was a very important part of the brand building of this business and was an important aspect of the brand and a remarkable marketing achievement,” said Stuart Burgdoerfer, Chief Financial Officer of VS parent company L Brands, said of the Fashion Show at the time of its cancellation. “We’re figuring out how to advance the positioning of the brand and best communicate that to customers.”

The Tour may be recruiting top talent to reinvigorate its runways, but the brand is still facing headwinds. Earlier this year, its CEO Amy Hauk resigned less than a year into the job, and last year, a Hulu documentary delved into the company’s prior links to Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier charged in 2019 with sex trafficking underage girls.