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Wings! Fake tans! Low body mass indexes! For millennial women, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was an annual reminder of the myriad ways in which we were failing to adhere to exacting and exhausting beauty standards. When it was cancelled in 2019, few mourned it. But fashion loves a comeback story, and today the company unveiled Victoria’s Secret: The Tour ’23 on Amazon Prime Video, its first televised catwalk event in five years. According to the company, the feature-length film is the “ultimate expression” of their ongoing efforts to rehabilitate a brand that has been mired in scandal. Alongside long-standing criticisms over promoting an unrealistic body image, the company’s former marketing executive Ed Razek was also accused of behaving inappropriately with models in a New York Times report (he described the allegations as “categorically untrue, misconstrued or taken out of context”) and a recent Hulu documentary Angels and Demons explored troubling links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Visually, strategically, everything about it is the incarnation of where the brand is going,” Victoria’s Secret president Greg Unis has said. Instead of the usual structure, which was centred around a straightforward runway show, The Tour ’23 is roughly divided into quarters, each focusing on one of four locations: Lagos, Nigeria; Bogota, Colombia; Tokyo, Japan; London, the UK. In each city, a local designer has dreamed up their own fashion collection to be modelled by the likes of Naomi Campbell, Emily Ratajkowski, Adut Akech, and Gigi Hadid, who does double duty as the show’s narrator. In London, the chosen designer is Michaela Stark, whose corsets aim to celebrate a diverse range of body shapes, rather than constrict them. She agreed to take part in the VS show 2.0, she suggests, so that she could counteract the damaging messages put out by the original runways. “It was a big thing” when she was a teenager, she recalls, “but it was also that culture around it, of not wanting to eat after you saw it”. Her comments inadvertently raise a question that looms over the whole production: can you ever truly detoxify a brand practically built on the insecurities of a generation of women? Founded by Roy Raymond in the late Seventies, who felt awkward buying lingerie for his wife in his local department store, Victoria’s Secret began life as a women’s underwear shop aimed specifically at men. In 1982, Raymond sold the business to Limited Stores founder Les Wexner for $1m; Wexner went on to transform the brand, envisaging it as a more affordable version of the fancy European label La Perla. In 1995, when the company was facing competition from Wonderbra, the first Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. It proved successful enough to become an annual event. In 1999, the show was streamed on the internet for the first time, prompting the website to crash as 1.5 million users tried to tune in. Two years later, the VS show celebrated its inaugural TV broadcast, during which the National Organisation for Women (NOW) protested outside a New York branch of the shop. “Some people are terribly blase about this, that this is not a big deal, that we ought to be used to this kind of daily sexuality,” Sonia Ossorio, NOW’s vice president for public information, said at the time. “But I think we need to keep questioning the ever-extending sexualisation of women in mass media.” The following year, NOW branded the event a “softcore porn infomercial”. By then, the blueprint for future VS shows had been set. A lineup of models would don bras encrusted with millions of pounds worth of jewels and embarrassingly themed lingerie (never forget Cara Delevingne’s god-awful outfit circa 2013: a sort of miniature shell suit likely pitched in the boardroom as “sexy football fan”). Somewhere between the models, a famous singer would pop in for a brief performance; if they were a woman, they’d be decked out in a VS creation of their own (Taylor Swift got a particularly raw deal in 2013, too, when she had to wear a Union Jack-inspired number, complete with a tiny red, white and blue top hat). This glittering, over-the-top spectacle, much closer to a beauty pageant than a Fashion Week presentation, spotlighted the world’s most beautiful women – who were not just genetically blessed but worked hard, too, we were told ad nauseam. They had been preparing for the show like endurance athletes, sticking to carefully tailored diets and intense workout schedules. These wing-wearing “Angels” were selling a dream, one that we lesser mortals could supposedly buy into by picking up some synthetic underwear at our nearest Victoria’s Secret branch. But it was their painstaking fitness regimens, not the pants they were wearing, that were the real focus of fascination. In endless interviews, the models were asked to detail exactly how they whittled themselves down to “Victoria’s Secret ready” size – so that we could try and copy them. To combat the criticisms of objectification, the brand relied on its models to pay lip service to just how “empowering” the whole circus was, offering up their take on choice feminism. “There’s something really powerful about a woman who owns her sexuality and is in charge” – model Karlie Kloss was peddling this line to the media as late as 2018. “A show like this celebrates that and allows all of us to be the best versions of ourselves. Whether it’s wearing heels, make-up or a beautiful piece of lingerie – if you are in control and empowered by yourself, it’s sexy.” Naturally, it was very convenient that this “best version of ourselves” aligned with the oppressively narrow conventional standard of sexiness Victoria’s Secret was selling. By the late 2010s, though, as the fashion industry began to (slowly) address its diversity problem, Victoria’s Secret started to seem more and more like an anachronism. As other brands took small steps to spotlight plus-size models on their catwalks and in their advertising campaigns, the VS show remained the preserve of the extremely thin. They had been preparing for the show like endurance athletes, sticking to carefully tailored diets and intense workout schedules Placing white models in culturally insensitive outfits (see: Kloss walking down the runway wearing a Native American-inspired headdress) only added to the glaring PR problem, which was later exacerbated when the brand’s marketing boss Ed Razek made controversial comments about transgender people and plus-size models to Vogue in 2018. “It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in your show?” he said, apparently recalling questions from critics. “No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy.” Elsewhere, he claimed “no one had any interest” in seeing bigger bodies on the VS catwalk. Razek later apologised, admitting that his “remark regarding the inclusion of transgender models in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show came across as insensitive”. His comments about plus-size bodies went unaddressed. In 2019, against a backdrop of plummeting TV ratings and declining sales, the brand confirmed that the VS show had been cancelled; instead, they said, the company would focus on “evolving” their marketing. The news came just a few months after the revelation that Jeffrey Epstein had provided financial advice to Victoria’s Secret founder Wexner – and had exploited his personal connection to the brand as a means to lure in young women. “Being taken advantage of by someone who was so sick, so cunning, so depraved, is something that I’m embarrassed I was even close to,” Wexner said to investors. “But that is in the past.” He left the company the following year. Since then, Victoria’s Secret has made some high-profile attempts to rectify past missteps. The company brought in a majority female board of directors; they ditched the “Angels” concept in favour of the new “VS Collective” whose ranks include actor Priyanka Chopra, US football star Megan Rapinoe, and plus-size model Paloma Elsesser. Last year, an ad campaign featuring a more diverse array of women was accompanied by the slogan “we’ve changed” – supposedly into something “ever-evolving” and “real”. How much has Victoria’s Secret “changed”, really? The latest show features a handful of plus-size models, Elsesser included, but many of the old VS cohort are present and correct, including Candice Swanepoel, Lily Aldridge, and Adriana Lima. The nods to body diversity can’t help but feel a bit cursory when the overriding vision is still one of impossibly thin women parading up and down a runway – albeit a runway that now snakes around a Brutalist building in Barcelona as opposed to a swanky New York City hotel. The outfits too, are more arty, less skimpy this time around and mercifully there hasn’t been the usual media battery of stories on extreme exercise and diet in the run-up – but that doesn’t mean those practices have ended altogether. “We haven’t forgotten our past, but we’re also speaking to the present,” the brand’s chief creative director Raul Martinez said before the film’s launch. In an era when more inclusive, dynamic lingerie labels, like Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty, reign supreme, the VS show can’t help but seem like a relic. And as long as its legacy of impossible body standards lives on for many of us, any attempts to dress the spectacle up as empowering feel very hollow indeed. Read More Naomi Campbell and Gigi Hadid lead first Victoria’s Secret runway show in five years Victoria's Secret overhauls its racy fashion catwalk in its latest moves to be more inclusive Chioma Nnadi at Vogue: All hail the era of the Black female fashion editor Naomi Campbell and Gigi Hadid lead first Victoria’s Secret runway show in five years Kim Kardashian debuts buzz cut and thin eyebrows for new photo shoot Travis Kelce wears ‘1989’ inspired outfit after leaving NFL game with Taylor Swift

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Haas have confirmed an unchanged line-up on the grid for the 2024 Formula 1 season with both Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen retaining their seats. The experienced pairing have combined well so far in 2023, with Hulkenberg particularly impressive in qualifying. Though the team’s qualifying speed has translated to just three combined top ten race finishes, Haas hope that tweaks made during the F1 summer break will allow them to climb the Constuctors Championship standings from their current position of eighth. And some reports suggested that Guenther Steiner’s team may look to refresh their driver line-up with a younger option alongside one of the veterans in 2024, Haas have now confirmed that the German and the Dane will again combine. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve had an extremely solid driver pairing this season in Formula 1 and ultimately there was no reason to look to change that moving forward,” said team principal Steiner. “Kevin is obviously a very well-known quantity to us, and I’m delighted he’ll return for what will be his seventh season in Haas colours. With 113 starts for our team alone, we know where his strengths lie and his knowledge and experience of our organisation pairs very well with that too. “On the other side of the garage, Nico’s simply slotted in without fuss or fanfare and proved himself to be a valuable member of the team. He’s approaching 200 starts in Formula 1 and we’re very happy to be the beneficiary of that experience behind the wheel. “We’ve had to tackle our issues this season with regards to the VF-23, we don’t hide from that, but we’ve been extremely fortunate to have had two drivers whose feedback is invaluable in assisting our engineering objectives.” Hulkenberg was given a surprise F1 lifeline before the start of this season, with the German called in from a position as Aston Martin’s reserve driver to replace compatriot Mick Schumacher. It represents the first full-time seat that the 36-year-old has held in the sport since 2019, and Hulkenberg has enjoyed a number of strong showings, making it to Q3 at half of the 12 races so far and recording a best finish of seventh at the Australian Grand Prix. “It’s nice to get things sorted early for next season to just keep the focus on racing and improving performance,” Hulkenberg said. “I enjoy being part of the team and share Gene [Haas] and Guenther’s passion for it. We’re competing in a very tight midfield and I’m looking forward to building on what we’ve done together so far and taking that forward into 2024.” The Formula 1 campaign resumes in the Netherlands this weekend with the Dutch Grand Prix. Hulkenberg and Magnussen are currently 14th and 18th respectively in the Drivers’ Championship standings, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen streaking towards a third consecutive world title. Read More Guenther Steiner interview: What makes star of Drive to Survive tick? Mick Schumacher’s crash on ‘slow lap’ in Japan was final straw, says Guenther Steiner F1 2023 calendar: Every Grand Prix race this season F1 2023 calendar: All 23 Grand Prix this year F1 takes steps to prevent use of flares at Dutch Grand Prix Felipe Massa starts legal action over 2008 F1 title loss to Lewis Hamilton

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Toto Wolff said Mercedes must take Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification from the United States Grand Prix on the chin – and make sure it does not happen again. Nearly four hours after Hamilton finished second in his most competitive race of the season – one he could have won if Mercedes did not fluff their strategy lines – the stewards declared his car did not comply with the regulations. The depth of the new floor on Hamilton’s upgraded Mercedes was adjudged to be “outside the thresholds outlined in Article 3.5.9 e).” – which states that the plank cannot wear to below 9mm thickness. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who finished sixth, was disqualified for the same breach following Sunday’s 56-lap race at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas. Mercedes said the sprint format – which allows for just one hour of practice before parc ferme rules heavily constrict changes to the cars – had a bearing on Hamilton’s disqualification. But team principal Wolff said: “In the end, all of that doesn’t matter. Others got it right where we got it wrong and there’s no wiggle room in the rules. “We need to take it on the chin, do the learning and come back stronger next weekend in Mexico.” Four cars were chosen at random following the race. Both winner Max Verstappen’s Red Bull and Lando Norris’ McLaren passed the scrutineering checks. Hamilton’s demise elevated Norris to runner-up behind Verstappen, who claimed the 50th win of his career and 15th from 18 this season, and Carlos Sainz to third. Sergio Perez was promoted to fourth to extend his lead over Hamilton in the fight for second place in the championship from 27 points to 39. Hamilton crossed the line just 2.2 seconds adrift of Verstappen after Mercedes’ move to attempt a one-stop strategy backfired and probably denied the seven-time world champion his first victory in 686 days. But despite expressing frustration at his team’s strategy, Hamilton was asked if he has been provided hope that he could taste victory before the season is out. “Yes, definitely,” replied the 38-year-old. “The steps that we were able to take this weekend has given me a little bit more confidence to throw the car into the corners. “There are still some of the fundamental issues that we’re having with the car, which won’t change until next year. But it was really positive to feel that the decisions we are taking are the right ones.” Hamilton will be back in action at this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix with rounds to follow in Brazil and Las Vegas before the campaign concludes in Abu Dhabi on November 26. Read More Max Verstappen defies Lewis Hamilton to edge United States Grand Prix victory I can do something wiser with my time – George Russell stops using social media Charles Leclerc snatches pole position after Max Verstappen’s lap was deleted Daniel Ricciardo ready for AlphaTauri return at United States Grand Prix On this day in 2009: Jenson Button crowned Formula One world champion in Brazil FIA to review Qatar GP as ‘dangerous’ temperatures prompt driver complaints

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