As the lingerie empire resurrects its most extravagant tradition, Kylie Jenner’s Fantasy Bra debut exposes a deeper tension between celebrity marketing, professional modeling and the economics of nostalgia.
For decades, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show sold something considerably more valuable than lingerie. It sold aspiration.
The elaborate wings, theatrical runway productions, diamond-encrusted bras and carefully cultivated supermodels transformed an annual promotional event into a recognizable cultural institution. Its greatest commercial achievement was not simply persuading women to purchase underwear. It was persuading an audience that the brand represented an extraordinary world.
On October 18, 2026, Victoria’s Secret attempted to reclaim one of that world’s most recognizable symbols. After an eight-year absence, the Fantasy Bra returned to the runway. Designed in collaboration with Jacob & Co., the creation was valued at approximately $50 million and featured 4,410 natural diamonds. The woman selected to wear it was Kylie Jenner.
The decision generated the kind of international attention that modern marketing departments are built to pursue. Yet it also raises a question with consequences extending beyond a single runway show: When a fashion company replaces the symbolic value of a professional modeling milestone with the immediate reach of a celebrity, what exactly is it buying—and what might it be giving up?
The Business of Selling a Fantasy
Victoria’s Secret is not attempting its revival from a position of complete commercial weakness. According to its fiscal 2025 annual report, the company generated approximately $6.55 billion in net sales, an increase of 5% over the previous year. Comparable sales increased 5%, while gross profit rose approximately $100 million to $2.38 billion.
To understand the significance of Victoria’s Secret’s attempted revival, it is worth examining the company’s longer financial history. The brand’s extraordinary expansion during the 2000s coincided with the Fashion Show’s emergence as a global cultural spectacle. Its subsequent challenges illustrate why recovering the emotional appeal of that era has become such an important commercial ambition.
Its corporate strategy places particular emphasis on strengthening its authority in bras, reconnecting with customers and developing a more compelling public identity. A traditional advertising campaign purchases exposure. A successful cultural institution creates an occasion that audiences voluntarily discuss, photograph, revisit and anticipate.
At its peak, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show accomplished precisely that. Its models were not interchangeable participants in a marketing production. They became recurring characters in a recognizable brand universe. Their careers, personalities and runway histories accumulated meaning over time.
Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Gisele Bündchen, Heidi Klum and other prominent models were associated with the brand across multiple years. Their continued participation helped create a sense of institutional history. That history was commercially useful.
An audience that recognizes the women wearing the products has a reason to return the following year. A model’s personal success becomes part of the company’s narrative, while the company’s visibility strengthens the model’s career. It is a mutually reinforcing arrangement: the brand creates stars, and those stars increase the value of the brand.
The Fantasy Bra Was Never Just Jewelry
The Fantasy Bra began in 1996 and developed into one of the company’s most recognizable publicity traditions. Its extravagant valuations made headlines, but the jewelry was only one part of its significance.
The distinction of wearing the Fantasy Bra came to represent a highly visible milestone in a model’s association with Victoria’s Secret. For viewers who followed the Fashion Show year after year, the selection carried a narrative: a recognizable model had reached a celebrated moment in her career. The 2026 decision departed from that tradition.
Jenner is unquestionably a powerful celebrity whose influence extends across beauty, fashion, entertainment and social media. Her selection can be understood as a calculated attempt to maximize attention surrounding the Fantasy Bra’s return.
From a marketing perspective, that logic is understandable. But visibility and brand equity are not identical. A celebrity can bring millions of people to a single moment. An institution must give those people a reason to care about the next one. The question is whether Victoria’s Secret can accomplish both.
The Models Who Helped Build the Institution
The controversy surrounding the 2026 show was not limited to Jenner’s appearance. Former Angel Romee Strijd publicly expressed disappointment about her exclusion from the production and the handling of the casting process. Victoria’s Secret acknowledged her contributions while confirming that she had been released from consideration.
For audiences who remember the previous generation of Angels, the situation highlighted a broader concern: whether the professional models who contributed to the brand’s cultural identity are receiving the recognition their work warrants. This concern deserves careful examination. The available reporting does not establish that Jenner’s selection directly caused Strijd’s exclusion, nor does it establish that a particular model was entitled to a contract.
Casting is a commercial decision involving many factors, and the runway included established professional models as well as celebrity appearances. Nevertheless, the symbolic tension is real. Fashion modeling is a profession requiring technical ability, physical discipline, adaptability and sustained career development. The industry’s growing reliance on celebrity recognition introduces a different competitive advantage: the ability to deliver a large, pre-existing audience. Neither quality automatically excludes the other. But when attention becomes the primary measure of value, the economics of opportunity can change.
When Audience Size Becomes Professional Currency
Celebrity casting reflects a broader transformation in the fashion industry’s business model. Historically, modeling agencies, fashion editors, designers and luxury houses played substantial roles in developing recognizable fashion personalities.
Today, brands can also select public figures who arrive with established audiences and direct distribution channels. This changes the incentives. A professional model may offer years of runway experience, a distinctive visual identity and an association with the brand’s history. A celebrity may offer immediate visibility across social platforms and entertainment media.
For a company trying to rebuild cultural relevance, the second proposition can be particularly attractive. But the calculation should not end with impressions. Marketing executives must also consider whether a campaign strengthens consumer loyalty, increases customer acquisition, improves purchasing behavior or makes the brand more distinctive over time.
Those outcomes cannot be determined solely by the number of headlines generated after a fashion show. Nor can they be inferred from the $50 million valuation of a jeweled garment. That figure represents the reported value of the Fantasy Bra, not the company’s expenditure on the show or its financial return.
A serious assessment would require campaign costs, incremental sales, audience conversion data and longer-term brand tracking—information that has not been established by the public reporting reviewed for this article.
Nostalgia Is an Economic Asset
The most revealing element of Victoria’s Secret’s revival may be the company’s willingness to return to the symbols that once distinguished it. The wings are back. The theatrical production is back. The Fantasy Bra is back. These decisions suggest that the company sees enduring value in its historical identity. Nostalgia, however, is not simply a collection of familiar visual references. It depends on continuity.
Audiences remember the women who walked the runway, the campaigns that introduced them and the anticipation surrounding their appearances. Those memories contribute to the value of the institution itself.
When a brand revives its historic symbols, consumers inevitably compare the new experience with the one they remember. That creates an opportunity, but also a challenge. The company must modernize without making the traditions it is reviving feel arbitrary. There is no reason a contemporary Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show cannot welcome celebrities, introduce new models and celebrate a broader range of beauty. The question is how to preserve the meaning of its most recognizable honors while doing so.
Why Romee Strijd Should Wear the Next Fantasy Bra
Victoria’s Secret has an opportunity to demonstrate that its revival is about more than recreating the appearance of its past. Selecting Romee Strijd for a future Fantasy Bra would be a particularly compelling way to do it.Strijd represents an identifiable chapter of the brand’s runway history. Her return would create a narrative grounded in professional achievement, continuity and recognition.
It would also provide a different kind of publicity: not the surprise of seeing a celebrity enter an established institution, but the emotional satisfaction of seeing a familiar model celebrated by it.This is an editorial recommendation, not a claim that Strijd has been promised the role or that her selection would produce a particular financial outcome.
The commercial argument is that established brand relationships can be assets worth cultivating. A successful fashion institution should be capable of generating its own stars rather than relying exclusively on people who became famous elsewhere.
The Real Cost of Attention
Kylie Jenner’s Fantasy Bra appearance succeeded in attracting substantial media coverage. Whether it ultimately strengthens Victoria’s Secret’s business remains an open question.
The company is attempting something difficult: rebuilding an institution whose commercial success once depended on glamour, spectacle, cultural influence and a distinctive roster of professional models.Its recent financial performance suggests that the wider business is making progress.
But the Fashion Show’s long-term value will depend on whether Victoria’s Secret can transform individual publicity moments into sustained consumer attachment. That requires more than diamonds, wings or celebrity appearances. It requires a reason for audiences to believe that becoming a Victoria’s Secret Angel still means something. The most valuable thing Victoria’s Secret can restore may not be the Fantasy Bra itself. It may be the prestige of the women who earn the opportunity to wear it.
