Gigi Hadid and Candice Swanepoel are two of the reasons I make time for this show. Not because I think a model must look one particular way. Quite the opposite: what fascinates me is that two women can step onto the same runway and change its temperature in completely different ways.
Gigi brings an ease that makes a giant production seem briefly human-sized. Candice has a precise, unhurried confidence. She knows the stage, but she never looks as though she is merely repeating a trick. Watch the transition from a still photograph to a moving person and you understand why modelling is a craft. The photograph gives you a face. The walk gives you a point of view.
A return is not a rewind
Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio have been associated with Victoria’s Secret for so long that their return can look like a reunion with the show’s own past. That is part of the pleasure. It is not the whole story. They are not preserved versions of their younger selves, and I do not want them to be. Experience changes a performer. In fashion, we should be able to call that an asset.
Barbara Palvin gives me another reason to watch. Her show appearances have not followed a neat annual line: she walked in 2012 and returned in 2018, then became an Angel in 2019. The years between those moments invite plenty of internet theories about body measurements. I will not present a theory as a fact about her life. What matters tonight is the woman who chooses to walk now, not an old measuring tape.
Let new faces interrupt our favourites
I know my own habits. When Gigi or Candice appears, I pay attention. But a show filled only with the people I already love would be a museum. The first-time walkers deserve a real chance to surprise us, not a few seconds of screen time between famous names.
That is the balance I hope Victoria’s Secret finds tonight: memory without being trapped by it, spectacle without forgetting the person inside it. If I remember one unfamiliar model’s walk tomorrow morning, the show will have done something worthwhile.
This column represents the author's view. It is separate from News Beast's automated, source-backed news reports.