June 14, 2012 |
The entire experience of last November’s Victoria’s Secret show can be boiled down to two words: Karlie Kloss.
The model had turned 19 a few months before, making it the first year that she was eligible to stomp the Victoria’s Secret catwalk. And her performance was mesmerising: her 6ft frame, soft skin wrapped around a perfect amount of lean muscle (and close to 0% body fat), sashaying down a pink carpet in skintight strapless leather bodysuit tucked into sky-high, over-the-knee boots. Her first exit was during Kanye West’s first performance, and even he – while he was in the middle of a song, mind you – couldn’t help but gawk up at the otherworldly beauty. It was amusing for us in the audience to watch: Kanye, his pants sagging, hunchbacked and momentarily in awe of someone besides himself, gawking up at Karlie, her hands clinching her hips, creating the most ridiculous and glamorous hip-hop sadomasochistic menagerie in history.
Kanye and Karlie weren’t the only visual treats at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. There was the surprise guest, which I’m sure everyone has heard about by now: Jay-Z came out for one of Kanye’s songs. It was a sensation. (Coincidentally, I had seen Kanye and Jay-Z kick off their Watch the Throne tour at Madison Square Garden the night before. Those two are the most important men in hip-hop music today, and watching them shuck and jive together twice in a 24-hour period was outrageous. Even for a jaded, musical theatre-loving, bitter queen like myself.)
After Jay-Z there was Maroon 5, with the lead singer Adam Levine doing a strut down the runway with his (now ex) girlfriend Anne V; and after them came Nicki Minaj in a colourful array of craziness. The fact that Victoria’s Secret can commandeer this sort of talent for, um, a single song only serves as proof of their power. Victoria’s Secret is an American icon. Their shows have transcended mere fashion show, or lingerie preview, and become a zeitgeist of modern pop. They are a cultural event, a sparkled and fabulous moment, where the worlds of entertainment, fashion, extravagance and fashion all converge. Carine Roitfeld once told me that the Victoria’s Secret fashion show is her favourite one of the year, and for the past two years she has taken the designer Alexander Wang as her date.
This is what makes them not only fun to watch from the audience, but important for the girls in the show. Like magazine covers and cosmetic campaigns, the all-power Victoria’s Secret contract is now one of the fashion industry’s badges of honour. Just look at Karlie, a girl I love like a sister – which makes my excitement at her appearance in a much-watched lingerie show both creepy and supportive – who hardly needed any encouragement on the runway. (Did anyone else see the girl’s Steven Meisel-lensed first-ever nude shoot for Italian Vogue? Holy cow.)
Beyond the cultural significance of the show, these trips down the runway can make or break a model’s career. If you get in with Victoria, you’re in the money. Trust me. I once went backstage at a Victoria’s Secret show to try on a pair of wings – they’re heavier than I had ever thought and can be hard to walk in, which only makes me respect these sexy ladies even more – and witnessed a model cry real tears when she was told she was going to be given a look with wings. Yes. She cried. Tears of joy.
Angels have it made. They are well paid, well looked after and travel the world selling the lingerie American Dream. This is no exaggeration. Victoria’s Secret even has its own private jet. Go online and look at the shows and catalogues from yesteryears: every single major model has stomped down this runway, shimmied, blown kisses and winked at the celeb-packed front row. Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley – and these are just some of the names of girls who have stomped off the Victoria’s Secret runway and go on to achieve household-name status.
Perhaps what I find most remarkable about the show is how they manage to switch it up every year. I’m not sure how many people are on the creative team at Victoria’s Secret, but I applaud their ability to relentlessly mine contemporary culture and the modern male’s psyche to find new ways to reinterpret relevant sexual fantasies. While the shows are consistently sexy and over the top, the costumes are always new, and so are the performances. They know better than to repeat the same look.
This show started with ballerinas. The image of Candice Swanepoel stomping out to open the show is ingrained on my brain forever. Love Candice. She is that perfect blend of sweet and sexy, the sort of girl who can pull off a smile and a growl. Later in the ballerina section came out the Dutch stunner Doutzen, who received a rather impressive amount of applause. I always find it interesting to know who the crowd, and who the American public for that matter, is drawn to in these sorts of shows. Not that I was too shocked to learn that Doutzen, who has majestic curves and one of those adorably mischievous smiles, was one of the most popular girls at the show.
My other favourite thing to do at these shows is watch the men in the audience. In my career, I have probably been to thousands of fashion shows. It’s easy to tell when they’re boring: people start doodling in their notebooks (for a few seasons, I would get into very aggressive tick-tack-toe matches with a fellow editor), or whispering, or daydreaming, or the really ballsy ones will just pull out their cellphones and start responding to emails (Paris Hilton, back when she was invited to fashion shows, used to do that all the time). But that doesn’t go down at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. The audience is alert, awake and, for want of a better word, erect in their seats. And this has nothing to do with the fact that there are many more heterosexual men at this particular show than any other fashion show in the history of this industry. People like Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr’s husband, who smiled proudly as his baby momma strutted down in barely there attire. In one look, when she came out wearing a giant clam shell for an underwear section of the show, he gave her a standing ovation. Aww, sweet.
As the show continued, it only got better: Kanye came out to sing Stronger and had his aforementioned runway rendezvous with Karlie. Then there was a 1950s superhero montage. Another one of my runway favourites, Joan Smalls, came out, stomping like a pro. Then a red Moroccon Indian version that skewed a little matador, too, and Doutzen as a seriously sexy Spanish widow. Wrapping up the show there was a winter white section, which skewed a little Victorian and lacy. Last but not least, out came Minaj in a tribute to her own colourful, tweeny pop, with models and back-up dancers drowning in fluorescents.
It was at the finale, when Minaj was joined on stage by Kanye and the Maroon 5 boys, that the full effect of the Victoria’s Secret empire hit me. All that glamour, all that talent, all that skin, and all for us to see. I love Nicki Minaj, and I had so much more respect for her after coming out with the world’s most glamorous women in the world’s most sexy clothes. But hey, if you can’t beat them, join them!
by Derek Blasberg
