The 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show aired with glitter, fanfare, and million views in its first few hours. It featured a star-studded cast that included Angel Reese, Suni Lee, and a nine-months-pregnant Jasmine Tookes. The show streamed across Prime Video, YouTube, and social media, marketed as a comeback moment for the once-dominant lingerie brand.

Headlines praised its “reinvention.” Fashion outlets called it inclusive, modern, and energetic. But a growing number of viewers watched the show and saw something else entirely. They saw the Fenty blueprint, stripped of its architect.

Victoria’s Secret has re-entered the conversation by borrowing the aesthetic of the very brand that once eclipsed it.

Victoria’s Secret Copied the Fenty Formula Step by Step

In 2024, Victoria’s Secret made two major hires: Hillary Super, the former CEO of Savage X Fenty, and Adam Selman, the creative force behind several of Rihanna’s defining fashion moments. These weren’t just routine staffing decisions. They were a targeted attempt to rewire the brand’s image from the inside using people who had already redefined the lingerie space.

The result showed onstage. The 2025 fashion show leaned into segmented visuals, dramatic lighting, and festival-style performances from Missy Elliott, Karol G, and TWICE. Its casting choices echoed Savage’s playbook—plus-size bodies, athletes, trans models, and surprise faces that brought social-media buzz. The pacing, the production design, even the camera choreography followed a formula already proven successful by Savage X Fenty’s past shows on Amazon Prime.

The Media Praised VS and Erased Rihanna

Major fashion outlets declared Victoria’s Secret reborn. The media applauded its “fresh energy.” The Washington Post celebrated its ability to mix sex appeal with modern inclusivity. Those headlines repeated a familiar narrative: a legacy brand had learned from its past.

Screenshots of articles from The Washington Post and Euronews praising the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for its inclusive comeback, with images of Jasmine Tookes on the runway and the full model cast finale in New York City.

What they didn’t acknowledge was who had already done that work and when. Years before Victoria’s Secret returned to the runway, Rihanna had built a platform that made room for everyone legacy brands ignored. Savage X Fenty shows didn’t just include difference; they centred it. Disabled dancers, pregnant women, dark-skinned models, and gender-expansive performers all appeared on Rihanna’s stage long before they appeared in VS press kits.

Now that such casting is profitable, the shift is being rewritten as a Victoria’s Secret reinvention. But it was Rihanna who made it credible.

This was not a Revolution. It was a Corporate Extraction

Since 2018, Savage X Fenty has advanced a vision of beauty that foregrounded dark‑skinned models, plus‑size bodies, trans and non‑binary performers, and models with disabilities. Its Amazon Prime Video specials (from 2019 onward) showcased this inclusive ethos.

Victoria’s Secret, by contrast, returned with gloss, confetti, and a carefully diversified cast. Ashley Graham walked. New faces appeared. But the choreography echoed an aesthetic Savage X Fenty had already made standard. On social media, one viral post summed it up: “Savage is the real plus-size representation everyone wants to see.” The side-by-side visuals said more than any headline could.

Final Thoughts

Victoria’s Secret wants credit for transformation, but it staged that transformation on a runway Rihanna built. The show brought energy, standout moments, and welcome representation. Angel Reese’s debut was electric, and many models delivered strong, personality-filled performances that reminded audiences why runway still matters.

But the deeper issue is not execution, it’s credit. From casting to styling to the structure of the show itself, Victoria’s Secret followed a template that Rihanna introduced years earlier. And the creative minds who brought that template to life now work under a new banner.

This evolution was a quiet repackaging of a Black woman’s creative legacy, presented as a comeback. And until that’s acknowledged, the brand’s revival will remain an echo—loud, polished, but not original.

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