Victoria’s Secret Is Trying to Change With the Times. Or Is It?

Victoria’s Secret is not going down without a fight.

It knows what people have been saying: The lingerie brand is anachronistic; out of touch; mired in an old and objectifying idea of female beauty that is white, worked-out, boob-centric and essentially about naughty maid role play in the bedroom. It knows there have been analysts notes claiming the label is on a long spiral to nowhere.

It knows that Aerie, with its love-your-body-as-it-is message, is nipping at the label’s (high) heels. It knows Rihanna, with her all-inclusive Savage x Fenty lingerie line at New York Fashion Week, is gunning for it.

It knows that having a show with women dressed up as come-hither Scottish lassies on loan from Rob Roy’s fantasies in teeny tiny panties, over-the-knee argyle socks, push-up plaid bras and pleated tartan miniskirts during the same week that more than 100 female politicians from around the world gathered in the House of Commons in Britain to commemorate women’s suffrage, and the same week that an unprecedented number of women of all races and ages and sizes was elected to Congress was perhaps not the best timing.

So it began that show, which took place Thursday night on Pier 94 on the Far West Side of New York, with a video featuring some of its most famous models talking about how doing the show made them feel “successful,” “powerful,” “empowered,” “strong.” About how “we can be sexy for ourselves and who we want to be, not who a man wants us to be.” It even set the opening lineup to the song “This is Me” from “The Greatest Showman,” performed by the soul singer Leela James.

And then came the undies.

And the wings. And the diamanté body suits. The feathers. There was a floral section guest-designed by Mary Katrantzou, a London Fashion Week regular. (And a woman! See! Women like VS!) That section featured some wrap-waist cargo pants that looked suspiciously like … clothes. But that didn’t last long.