Victoria's Secret 'Dream Lingerie' 2024 Campaign with Behati, Candice, Devyn, Mayowa & Taylor

A quintet of Victoria’s Secret models past and present come together for the Victoria’s Secret ‘Dream Lingerie’ 2024 Campaign. The beauty lineup includes Behati Prinsloo, Candice Swanepoel, Devyn Garcia, Mayowa Nicholas and Taylor Hill. / Hair by Cyndia Harvey; makeup by Lauren Parsons; set design by Andy Hillman

The Victoria’s Secret ‘Dream Lingerie’ 2024 Campaign is shot at Longleat House, located in Wiltshire, England.

Emmanuelle Alt styles this campaign, and I find her to be a stabilizing force for the brand. This is not Alt’s first campaign, and I assume that she will be involved in the return of the VS Fashion Show this fall.

For a professional who joined the Victoria’s Secret business at a 187 store count and stayed a decade as fashion director, head of product development and originally a merchant developing a home store concept, these gorgeous images by Angelo Pennetta [IG] take me into the past.

Certainly, if one is trying to return Victoria’s Secret to its original glory, this is one way to do it. The business has tried everything else in its reinvention journey.

VS Manor Born Years

In the second or third store design of Victoria’s Secret in the early years — the Plantation, Fla design — the Ralph Lauren influence was pervasive, along with a Palm Beach vibe.

To be honest, the original Victoriana vibe at Victoria’s Secret overpowered my own design sensibilities, and I was really happy to leave it behind. It’s way too prissy for American women.

Returning to a Ralph Lauren vibe in the old Victoria’s Secret, AOC notes that in 2023 Ralph Lauren renewed their lease at the Rhinelander Mansion on Madison Avenue in Manhattan for another 10 years.

No brand has captured the American Spirit like Ralph Lauren. So that Anne is not misunderstood, let me clarify.

The American Dream as a Hopeful Lifestyle, Even in Lingerie

America’s VP and presidential candidate Kamala Harris stood with VP candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz on stages across America this week before wildly-enthusiastic crowds.

They had several messages but one resonated very deeply with me. Kamala Harris said [paraphrased] “Only in America could this daughter of Oakland and son of the Nebraska plains be asking you to send us to the White House.”

That statement is the core message of the American dream. It is also the core message of Ralph Lauren. And in my tenure at Victoria’s Secret in what I call the glory years, it was the lens through which I saw branding VS branding.

Just imagine if Victoria’s Secret had rocked as steady as Ralph Lauren for the last 40 years, rather than very publicly trying to recast its branding in the public eye for the last five years, since then CMO Ed Razek left the business.

What a train wreck we have all been put through.

Behati Prinsloo Gets Emotional

"I was emotional," Prinsloo told People Magazine about the Dream campaign shoot. "At the end of the day, I cried. I totally broke down. It was overwhelming. I couldn't even explain it. I was just overwhelmed with joy and memories, and the day went really great, and we had a great time, and it felt like the old days."

Now 36, Behati isn’t being overly emotional. She’s speaking to a Victoria’s Secret brand DNA that both VS women executives and customers alike understood. Wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie was supposed to be a transformational experience for “the woman in the mirror” from my point of view. This mantra was always my counsel in Monday night meetings and merchandising reviews.

The Battle to Control Women’s Bodies

You see how crazy America is in dumping sexual guilt on women in 2024. Between right-wing religious zealots and politicians fighting to control women’s bodies in America, our focus at Victoria’s Secret during my tenure was acting as a catalyst to have women embrace their sensual selves with positivity and pride.

Few people understand or value the psychological riches that were big VS assets during my tenure. Had Behati Prinsloo not perfectly expressed an emotion that resonates deeply to a core group of the original VS women, I would have kept this commentary short.

We made our money on Body by Victoria but psychologically our dear customer saw herself as one of these beautiful models in the Dream Campaign. No one was dealing with the psyche of an American women with as much respect as VS.

We had her trust; we were her life partner in her most private spaces — her sexuality and her bedroom. We were her ally on America’s political battlefield, even as a Republican.

Blowing Up the Victoria’s Secret Brand Was Unnecessary

As I’ve written multiple times — and pretty damn annoyed most on most of those occasions — there was no need to nearly blow up Victoria’s Secret to stabilize her oxygen after her divorce from Ed Razek and Jeffrey Epstein.

Yes, people were crazy in heaping disgust on Victoria’s Secret in that 2019 moment. But just as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have turned the Democratic party presidential ticket inside out in three short weeks, showing Americans that a more strategic-thinking route out of the black hole of politics is possible. Will we win? That remains to be seen. But our oxygen supply is suddenly pumping strong.

And as Behati Prinsloo noted, we are feeling JOY!

As will be revealed in an upcoming book this fall, I don’t know what in the world happened to Les Wexner in this devolution of the Victoria’s Secret brand. It was very unlike him to stop trusting his women executives and defer to Epstein and Razek in the battle for Victoria’s identity.

I have my own private thoughts about what happened and won’t speak now to those thoughts. But at one time in America, Wexner’s understanding of women lingerie wearers — and his hiring of women executives to best execute that vision — was legendary. I mean front-of-the-line legendary.

Not all former VS execs agree with me — even while we worked concurrently in the business. But my experience with Wexner was often hands-on.

Les Wexner’s Legacy

The legendary vision that created Victoria’s Secret is destroyed for all practical purposes. But I refuse to speak ill of Les.

Most people don’t know that Wexner went against the recommendations of his own trusted merchant advisers, who considered buying Victoria’s Secret to be a terrible idea.

Over dinner one night in London, Marty Trust told me what actually happened the day the decision to buy Victoria’s Secret was made. It’s a really great story.

In its pursuit of models with body inclusivity, while ticking every possible box — but not tackling the elephant in the room — I still don’t think that today’s VS has yet gotten into their customers’ conflicted-minds selves yearning to be free and in control of their own bodies.

Perhaps they don’t have to understand her inner-self.

But the last two campaigns have been good ones. This compliment does not ignore the sea of red ink that Victoria’s Secret continues to swim in.

Hope springs eternal, because like Behati Prinsloo, I also had a deeply-emotional relationship with Victoria’s Secret. I only wish the brand well. And that’s not because of some NDA technicality.

I understand Victoria in all her psychological and emotional glory. ~ Anne