The Victoria’s Secret Effect

Scroll through your feed for five minutes and you will see it: big, bouncy hair, skin that glows like it has its own light source, a pink cardigan over a lace top. Twenty years after its golden era, the Victoria’s Secret look is back, and the people wearing it are mostly too young to have watched the original shows on TV.

The bombshell returns

The turning point came in 2023, when Victoria’s Secret brought back Adriana Lima, Candice Swanepoel and Gisele Bündchen for a campaign called The Icon. Marketing Brew read it as the return of the “bombshell aesthetic”. Online the reaction was mostly enthusiastic (“Victoria’s Secret is backkkk”), even if critics called it a contradiction after years of promising something different.

Gen Z discovers PINK

The brand also knew exactly who it wanted to talk to. In 2024 YPulse reported that Victoria’s Secret was courting Gen Z with nostalgia, bringing back pieces like bedazzled PINK sweatpants, the kind of thing millennials wore to school in 2006. That year sales grew for four quarters in a row.

Gen Z is not copying the 2000s. It is borrowing the parts that were fun.

The hair, in two acts

Act one: at the 2024 show many models wore their hair slicked back, and viewers were not happy. They wanted the famous Angel hair. Act two: on 25 September 2025 Victoria’s Secret posted on Instagram, “We solemnly swear… to not slick back the hair.” They kept the promise. Marie Claire described the 2025 hair as “the ’90s blowout, perfected”, done with hot rollers, and 10 Magazine USA called the whole show “peak millennial nostalgia”, down to a segment set to Britney Spears’ “Toxic”.

The blowout did not stay on the runway. In March 2026 Forbes declared the ’90s blowout officially back, with one stylist explaining that people simply “want to feel put together again”.

How to wear it now

• The hairVolume at the roots and big, soft curls at the ends. Hot rollers are back for a reason.
• The skinGlow before colour: a little highlighter on the cheekbones does more than a full face of makeup.
• The clothesA soft pink knit, a lace top, a velour tracksuit. One piece at a time, never all at once.
• The ruleIt should look like you, on a very good day. Not like a costume.

The 18 October show proved the point. Backstage, hairstylist Guido Palau gave the models “the mega blowout combined with a celebration of natural textures and curls”, built on sky-high rollers, while Pat McGrath kept the skin luminous and the lips glossy. There was even a Vintage Victoria intermission of slip dresses, including reissues of past styles.

The Victoria’s Secret effect is not really about lingerie. It is about a feeling: glamorous, a bit too much and completely unbothered. Apparently, we missed it. ✦

Sources: Marketing Brew (2023), YPulse (2024), AOL (the “solemnly swear” post), Marie Claire (2025 hair), 10 Magazine USA (2025), Forbes (2026).