The 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

[Prettyphile]

And so it begins...

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Is this lingerie RACIST? Victoria's Secret come under fire for 'cultural appropriation' over Chinese themes in blockbuster Paris show

 

Victoria's Secret has been accused of 'cultural appropriation' and showcasing 'racist' underwear at its fashion show last night.

A whole host of famous faces including Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid were among the Victoria's Secret Angels who modelled the lingerie company's designs on the runway.

They wore elaborate creations, donning wings, tails, and statement jewellery as they walked the catwalk in Paris.

However, the exotic lingerie has fallen foul of some, who were unimpressed by the Asian and Mexican influences to some of the designs, and accused the brand of 'cultural appropiation'.

 

 

In a piece entitled 'Why Can't Victoria's Secret Stop Designing Racist Lingerie?', which appears to have since been taken down online, Helin Jung criticised the brand in Cosmopolitan magazine.

She accused the company of being condescending towards customers in China by borrowing from the country's culture.

'Stripping of cultures aside, the emblems that stood out most were the ones that came from Asia — specifically China,' she wrote.

The dragon that Elsa Hosk wore wrapped around her body, the embroidered stiletto boots seen on Adriana Lima, the tail made of flames worn by Kendall Jenner.

'There's a lot of talk of China as a dominant world power of the 21st century, and the U.S. government, Hollywood, and now Victoria's Secret, it seems, are pivoting to face a new reality.

'But the Orientalism on display here doesn't show an understanding or an attempt at dialogue. It doesn't close any gaps.

'What condescension, for Victoria's Secret to think that by wrapping a model in a dragon, it could connect directly with a new consumer in China,' Jung continued.

The brand and its creative leads shamelessly cherry-picked imagery, breaking apart aesthetic references from wherever they wanted and stitching them back together again. They're telling us its worldliness. It's not, it's a hack job,' she added.

'The fact is that even as the world gets more connected, a sexist, patriarchal, mostly white corporation continues to take what it wants for its own gain,' she continued, ending by telling VS to stick to 'thongs that don't have cultural references.'

It is not the first time the brand has come under fire for something similar - in 2012 Victoria' Secret attracted criticism after Karlie Kloss modelled a Native American-style headdress on the runway.  

However, the article has faced a fierce backlash with Twitter users rushing to defend the brand.

Robby Soave wrote: 'Not to be dramatic or anything but this article makes me fearful that we are entering a new Dark Ages.'

While Sophie Sandor ‏wrote: 'Helin Jung tries to argue that Victoria's Secret's annual fashion show was racist, sexist & patriarchal. I'm searching for the reasons why.'

Victoria’s Secret has not yet responded to Cosmopolitan‘s allegation.

Footage from the event will air in 190 countries around the world, including the UK, on December 5.

 

 

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Victoria's seedy Secret? It's gone from saucy to tawdry: And the  tragedy is it's convincing young women this is the only way to be desirable, says SARAH VINE

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Twenty years ago, supermodel Karen Mulder sashayed down a makeshift catwalk at the Plaza Hotel in New York wearing just a pretty white babydoll nightie, all honeyed limbs and glorious blonde hair.

This was a very early Victoria’s Secret lingerie show, which sent shock waves through the industry for its risqué ensembles and generous helpings of glamorous, golden flesh.

The American lingerie brand, then in its infancy, had struck upon a potent formula: send beautiful women down a catwalk in their undies and you’ll attract attention.

The strategy worked: the underwear brand now has yearly revenue of a staggering £6 billion, more than 1,000 stores, seven of them in the UK, and is planning further expansion across the globe.

It even has spin-off brands, including the controversial Pink line, which the shop claims targets 18-20-year-olds, but is beloved of eight to 14-year-old ‘tween’ girls everywhere thanks to its cutesie, soft-cup bras.

(In 2013 the Victoria’s Secret chief financial officer Stuart Burgdoerfer admitted that ‘When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be? They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.’)

Looking back now on the first shows, the girls from 1995 and 1996 seem positively overdressed — their outfits, if not exactly monastic, then definitely understated in comparison to today. The original models wear short nighties and little babydolls, jackets over their bras and even — shock — the odd full-length nightdress.
Fast forward to 2016, and here’s supermodel Martha Hunt in a bit of dental floss for pants; Gigi Hadid  in a black strappy number, also apparently made out of oral hygiene tape

In fact, the contrast between then and now brings to mind that old Cole Porter classic: In olden days, a glimpse of stocking/ Was looked on as something shocking/ But now, God knows/ Anything goes.

Plus ca change. Fast forward to 2016, and here’s supermodel Martha Hunt in a bit of dental floss for pants; Gigi Hadid in a black strappy number, also apparently made out of oral hygiene tape.

Irina Shayk’s buttocks appeared to have broken free entirely of their moorings, while her angular colleague, Lais Oliveira, showcased the kind of happy-hooker chic that Pink, the Victoria’s Secret teen line, has become known for.

Contrast this display with that first show, featuring Karen Mulder in what by today’s standards is practically a burka: a babydoll nightie and mules.

Or with Claudia Schiffer a year later, demure in a shimmering floor-length gown with barely a hint of cleavage, nary a bikini wax on show. Or that long-ago 1998 line up of Daniela Pestova, Stephanie Seymour, Mulder and Ines Rivero, almost endearingly kitsch in Austin Powers-style gold boots, skirts and matching jackets.

Nowadays these are the kinds of outfits the models wear just to travel to the shows; the stuff they actually wear on the catwalk is so revealing you can practically glimpse their internal organs

There’s something else striking about the pictures from 20 years ago, too. The girls have curves. Not excessive ones, of course —this is still a catwalk, they’re all slim as pins. But they don’t look like they’ve been surviving on nothing but chamomile colonics and tissue paper for the previous three weeks, like the current lot.

A shot of Tyra Banks in 2005 shows her looking positively well-fed. In 2006 Karolina Kurkova lives up to her curvaceous-sounding name in a bizarre air hostess-inspired ensemble. Naomi Campbell in 2005: vibrant. Heidi Klum, juicy as a ripe strawberry in 2008/9, while Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in 2010’s blue gingham is borderline buxom.

This year’s show could not have been more different. Just look at the line up of waif-like Elsa Hosk, Alessandra Ambrosio, Taylor Hill and Martha Hunt in Paris: there’s no joy, no colour, no fun, no sexiness. Just a group of gaunt women trussed up with string like so many Sunday roasts, a homogeneous assemblage of coltish limbs, big blow dries and flashbulb grins.

So when did it get like this? When did the Victoria’s Secret show go from being a bit of saucy fun, a seaside postcard of a catwalk to something that, not to put too fine a point on it, resembles a work outing at the local knocking shop?

How did it go from selling babydoll nighties to housewives to being an enormous money-making machine selling tiny, overpriced underwear to teen girls?

You can see the slide into more and more nudity, more and more flesh as the years go by. Why? Easy — in the Nineties, as the first Victoria’s Secret model walked down the catwalk, another phenomenon was just taking hold: the internet. As porn became readily available, and the ‘pornification’ of society of the Nineties — with its strip clubs and fake bosoms — took hold, Victoria’s Secret followed suit. Suddenly, no one was shocked by a babydoll nightie, and the company started upping the ante.

Then, around 2012, a couple of years after Twitter and Instagram launched, the culture of the selfie really began to take off. Models and celebrities started posting pictures of themselves semi-naked on social media, blurring the lines between their personal and public lives.

People quickly discovered that the more they shared, the more ‘likes’ they got.

The culture of internet porn began to infect the mainstream as well, and a downward spiral began — with the result that a pretty girl in a bikini is no longer enough to set the world alight.

And, of course, where celebrities go, others will follow. Take a look through photo-sharing site Instagram, and notice a strange thing: all the women are starting to look similar. There’s the Victoria’s Secret tan, the toned stomach, the pouts and show-offishness. But worse, here are young women who don’t think twice about posing in their bras in the most provocative ways imaginable.

Victoria’s Secret has always been fashion’s answer to the Playboy mansion, a playground filled with impossibly glamorous, nubile women, but now it reflects a far darker picture. That of a world where girls and young women are objectified as never before, where the aesthetics of porn have begun to re-shape our bodies and our minds — and where the feverish fantasies of a million bedroom-bound geeks are finally, horrendously, made flesh.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[RaffyPooh]

"A shot of Tyra Banks in 2005 shows her looking positively well-fed. In 2006 Karolina Kurkova lives up to her curvaceous-sounding name in a bizarre air hostess-inspired ensemble. Naomi Campbell in 2005: vibrant. Heidi Klum, juicy as a ripe strawberry in 2008/9, while Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in 2010’s blue gingham is borderline buxom."

 

Is this a joke? Other than Tyra's belly in 2005 at the end of the show, how can you call any of these women larger than what we have now? 

 

This is a desperate article looking to latch on to some extra page views during the show and nothing else what a joke. I can't even be bothered to read the rest I'm probably gonna lose brain cells. 

[BeautifulNightmare]

1 hour ago, Kevork89 said:

@Prettyphile YAS!!! I love his music.

 

VS would never use it. There was a time they might've like in 2003 when they used Peaches AA XXX. But they're lame now.

 

what changed since then in terms of who is in charge of the music?

[RaffyPooh]

1 minute ago, BeautifulNightmare said:

 

what changed since then in terms of who is in charge of the music?

If you find the answer please tell me because I've wanted to wring their neck since like 2011.

[elfstone]

The article couldnt be more reactionary  

[elfstone]

23 minutes ago, Prettyphile said:

Contrast this display with that first show, featuring Karen Mulder in what by today’s standards is practically a burka: a babydoll nightie and mules.

Nice

I really hope VS design a nice burka themed lingerie outfit for their show in the near future. Theres no fuckin way anybody would even dare accuse them of cultural appropriation.

[RaffyPooh]

 Bella looks amazing here, I kinda wish they did this sort of make up for the show. It really highlights all of her features well, plus I'm a sucker for that Eric Prydz classic.

[unali]

This Sarah Vine is lunatic of the first order, but that is Daily Mail, what can you expect. But to have audacity to say that outfits are more revealing now??? Please, everybody is complaining that they cover girls too much, to the point that it no longer looks like underwear show. In the past few years society has become more slut shamey, prudish and VIctorian era-like and it scares me, honestly. Just imagine a show like 2005 today, with reveling underwear, asses uncensored, these brainwashed Stepford wives who pretend to be journalist would probably put a petition to burn Gisele, Karolina and the rest of them.

[MarVS]

WTF  seriouslyyy they need to take chill pill ....    

[unali]

At this point honestly I think Elsa has high chance to be cut off from opening segment, they are mad about few outfits, but they are most mad about hers. I can't even describe you how many times since yesterday I have seen that photo with dragon and people trashing it.

I think there is even petition on petition.org to remove it from show.

[MarVS]

2 minutes ago, unali said:

At this point honestly I think Elsa has high chance to be cut off from opening segment, they are mad about few outfits, but they are most mad about hers. I can't even describe you how many times since yesterday I have seen that photo with dragon and people trashing it.

I think there is even petition on petition.org to remove it from show.

WHATTTT  no like noo pleaseee 

 i cant with this  @ clauds read this joke 

[Corner]

This article is a pile of dung. The models have always  been  stick thin, minus Heidi and Tyra. What is this write even getting at? The outifts are more risqué? How rich.

And dying @ them name dropping Ale with the new girls. Girl doesn't deserve such disrespect tbh

[AngelAshley94]

I really wish Bruno would've sang Uptown Funk for Pink instead of Chunky...

[unali]

27 minutes ago, MarVS said:

WHATTTT  no like noo pleaseee 

 i cant with this  @ clauds read this joke 

Last time I saw it, it had 200 signatures, there was post about it on tumblr. Now I can't find it, I followed the link, but it is deleted.  But outrage is real, I still can't believe this shit. 

[pugnetta]

Total disappointment in fake lingerie transparency, ALL the models seem to wear  some sort of second pair of panties, I've never seen a girl wearing under-panties-armor under see-through lingerie, and if she did, I'd fly her off the bed

[tycotyco]

I prefer the lipsync video with Lady Gaga than "24k magic". She interacts with the girls and she's really sweet with all of them. We saw a little part of the fittings but the moment that i want to see it's when they announced to Elsa she will opening the show (because we don't saw anything about that).

I love the duo Adriana/Lais, and finally we could see more Lais (promo event e.g).

 

I agree for Gigi, she's better with a little more weight on her body. The picture for SI are good. I don't know if her mother put a little presure on her too. 

For Bella on the runway she looks lost, i need to see in motion, but for the moment ... 

 

 

 

[La Vie Est Belle]

What! people are too judgmental for anything this day. They're too sensitive and immature. What is so racist about the outfits? Is just an outfit for a fashion show for lingerie, they're calling it slutty, that is too much skin. What do you expect for a lingerie fashion show a nun veil. Some people are just to ignorant. I don't see nothing offensive about the outfits the Asians and other countries should be flatter they're making outfits similar to their costume, it just means VS admire their style so they want to used it for their show. That is just the way I see it. 

[peroxideblonde]

1 hour ago, pugnetta said:

Total disappointment in fake lingerie transparency, ALL the models seem to wear  some sort of second pair of panties, I've never seen a girl wearing under-panties-armor under see-through lingerie, and if she did, I'd fly her off the bed

are you serious??? if i was a model i wouldn't want to wear transparent panties in front of a damn crowd

[conjab2013]

Anybody know what the finale music was?

[LuckyXR]

3 hours ago, pugnetta said:

Total disappointment in fake lingerie transparency, ALL the models seem to wear  some sort of second pair of panties, I've never seen a girl wearing under-panties-armor under see-through lingerie, and if she did, I'd fly her off the bed

If CBS blurs the butts could you imagine what they would do to the plethora of vaginas walking down the runway?