By, Vanessa Cole

October 20, 2025

Images feature our friend and famed photographer, Ben Watts' images shot at the 2018 Victoria's Secret Show. Ben's vision captured the essence of what made the VS brand so captivating. Check out his IGpost for more!

Last week’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show marked a cautious but welcome return to the elements that once made the brand iconic. While the production was a lighter version of its pre-2019 form, it showed a clear & welcome step back toward celebrating beauty, femininity and creative collaboration — characteristics that once defined not only this event, but the broader fashion and arts industries.

The pre-show segment, though well-intentioned, highlighted the challenges facing today’s creative economy: the struggle to balance authenticity with the evolving digital landscape, culture demands and overflowing creator economy. Part of this struggle a stumbling to define celebrity, as was seen in conversations on the pink carpet, which felt more contrived than creative. Many moments lacked the ease and confidence that once made the show’s personalities so memorable. Today's VS hosts had big shoes to fill behind former host, Heidi Klum, who so naturally, in the pre-2019 era shows, uplifted the pre-show & backstage appeal without effort through her infectious smile, radiant demeanor and simple, authentic banter... traits & skills that set talent professionals like Heidi apart in their irreplaceable value---brightly illuminating any imposter who attempts the feat. The shift underscores a broader tension in the culture— how to integrate new technologies without trampling organic flow and saturation of a commerce sector. This made further complicated by emerging influencers flooding into formerly exclusive step and repeat zones, who lack the timeless appeal of human charisma, experience, and skill of their predecessors, and many of whom are positioned more from followship than character, talent or creative accomplishment.

Overall, this year's show had some of the flare, but was missing the creative oomf that can only be achieved through human vision and careful, meticulous execution--- enabled at a pace that respects the creative process. Pre-2019 shows formerly showcased the world's most stunning women surrounded by a sea of talented creatives, doing what creatives do for society--- bending it's rules just enough to evoke emotion, intrigue and ASPIRATION--- this year, despite some movement toward a return to former objectives, I was left disappointed in this category. Where pre-2019 shows organically exuded immersive brand experiences that drew crowds beyond industry professionals and VS fans to be a part of the community, this show felt flat and creatively bland.

So what was still missing? The engaging storylines, the scale of production, many of the people you wanted to see and the costumes that told stories--- every one intricately designed and meticulously put together with care by a human artisan's very deliberate touch. Apparent, is the lost value in the lead up and therefore the polished impact. Sadly a common casualty of today's landscape, as creative directors we've been talking to, say they are more and more stripped of the space to be creative within a world pressured by the incessant and unsustainable demands of content churn & performance metrics --- bringing forward a quantity over quality approach that simply isn't memorable, immersive and doesn't resonate experiential.

Indeed, in earlier years, the Victoria’s Secret Show embodied an artistic ecosystem at its peak — where designers, artisans, stylists, producers, talent and performers worked together to create immersive, emotional experiences. These productions reflected the vitality of the creative workforce and its natural creative process behind the shows— a network of people whose talent, precision, and imagination drove both cultural and economic value, something the landscape is grappling with as new technologies make their impacts across these creative spaces and guardrails are explored.

Politics, of course have always had a respectable place in cultural spaces like the arts--- often driving the discord that prompts the passion--- this year's VS show and its outcome, shares that fashion and entertainment spaces-- where society looks for joy, fun and refuge from the mundane or highly charged political landscape of today-- need to be respected for what they have always been--- fun, sometimes frilly and entertaining or inspirational. The 2025 show revealed how much the creative industries have changed. The acceleration of technology, shifts in commerce, political landscapes, and the pressure for constant flows of content are reshaping how art, fashion, and entertainment are produced and consumed — finding that often this shift comes at the expense of depth and human touch... along with a more alarming reality in the jobs that are being lost within these creative & talent ecosystems. Commerce infrastructure that not only contributes multibillions of dollars to the economy, but also provides culture and quality of life to society.

Bringing the urgent need forward to ask the question: what will we value in our human experience within the arts genres, and how will we set guardrails to protect these things?

What’s at stake is more than nostalgia; it’s the sustainability of the human creative process itself. The drive for efficiency and scale has created an environment where automation can replace artistry, and algorithms can overshadow emotion. While technology has expanded opportunity, it has also displaced many creative roles that once fueled innovation, cultural identity & connection, at a pace never before seen in historic revolution.

As the Victoria’s Secret revival clearly suggests, audiences still crave the beauty, femininity, joy, and inspiration that only human creativity can evoke. Preserving this value — across fashion, film, visual arts, performance, talent and design — requires conscious choices from both industry leaders and consumers.

We believe that creativity and its natural pace should remain human-led: a process guided by imagination, skill, collaboration, and time. The arts, fashion, and entertainment sectors have long been engines of both economic vitality and personal expression. Their renewal depends on actively reaffirming the worth of the people behind the process — those whose ideas and craftsmanship give culture its direction and society its soul. Calling on careful scrutiny & guardrails for the evolving creator economy and how it is integrated into the commerce infrastructure.

Love it or hate it, Victoria's Secret and its clear mounting success with this year's show carried more cultural meaning, serving as proof that narratives claiming to know what women want, haven't actually represented women at all and that society has been starved for what it craves from the creative industries--- entertainment, aspiration, joy and inspiration. Very clearly the Victoria's Secret show positions that the brand is reading what its customers and fans want and I have every faith we will all get the chance to revel in the sexy, flirty, creative, immersive experiences of days past again!