Victoria’s Secret knows how to do sex appeal, with its stunning lingerie models known as Angels, its bold designs, and its mass-market appeal. But throughout the years, the popular retailer has been associated with an alarming number of controversial moments.
This year, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returns on Sunday, Oct. 18 on YouTube. Many Victoria’s Secret Angels that we know and love are walking the runway, such as Gigi Hadid, Ashley Graham, Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser, Adriana Lima, and Precious Lee, among others. There are some huge musical acts performing as well, including Katseye, Megan Moroney, Megan Thee Stallion, and Tate Mcrae. We are excited for this lineup, while wary at the same time — as the company is not without its scandals (and not the sexy kind).
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Ahead of the fashion show, we’ve looked back at some of the biggest Victoria’s Secret controversies, such as accusations about a lack of body diversity, ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and disparaging comments about transgender models. Keep reading for some of the alarming, eyebrow-raising moments below.
Victoria’s Secret’s CEO Was Linked to Jeffrey Epstein
In 2019, Victoria’s Secret came under fire after it was revealed that the company’s CEO Leslie Wexner was tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was Wexner’s personal financial advisor for years, per The Wall Street Journal.
Epstein reportedly influenced the models in the Victoria’s Secret shows, allegedly using his influence to coerce sex acts from underage girls, per the New York Post.
When Epstein was arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking underage girls in 2019, Wexner released a statement to employees saying that he “completely severed” ties with Epstein in 2007 and was “never aware of the illegal activity charged in the indictment,” per Business Insider.
“I would never have guessed that a person I employed more than a decade ago could have caused such pain to so many people,” he added. “I have searched my soul … reflected … and regretted that my path ever crossed his.”
Wexner stepped down from the company in 2020, per Forbes.
Transphobic Comments Were Made
The Chief Marketing Officer of L Brands, Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, Ed Razek made some blatantly transphobic comments in a 2018 interview with Vogue. When asked if the company will consider making changes based on input from Instagram, Razek complained about “all the people trying to tell me what an idiot I am this time of the year.”
“It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should,” he said. “Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special. That’s what it is. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and any other fashion brand in the world would take it in a minute, including the competitors that are carping at us.”
After backlash from this interview, Victoria’s Secret shared a message from Razek on X (then Twitter), where he called his remark “insensitive.”
“I apologize,” he continued. “To be clear, we absolutely would cast a transgender model for the show. We’ve had transgender models come to castings… And like many others, they didn’t make it… But it was never about gender.”
“I admire and respect their journey to embrace who they really are,” he added.
A year later, Valentina Sampaio became the first trans model to be featured in a campaign for Victoria’s Secret, per NBC News. In 2024, she and model Alex Consani became the first trans models to walk the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
“The Victoria’s Secret family has shown the world that being trans is just as exceptional and beautiful as anyone else on that runway,” Sampaio said on Instagram, per NBC. “Inclusivity is crucial to the world we’re building, and I’m honored to walk with pride, love, and the hope of inspiring the next generation.”
Consani walked in the fashion show again in 2025 and is set to return in 2026.
Lack of Body Diversity
Victoria’s Secret has often been (rightly) criticized for its lack of diversity in its shows, which were made up of mostly white, rail-thin models.
It’s “Perfect Body” campaign sparked backlash in 2014, the same year Aerie committed to ditching Photoshop for its models, per Business Insider. While other lingerie companies made strides in body diversity, Victoria’s Secret stayed the same.
In the same 2018 interview with Vogue, Razek said that Victoria’s Secret models are “skinny-shame[d]” online, defending the models’ obsessive workout and diet routines.
“Yes, they are aggressively physically fit, but the operative word is fit,” he said. “Should they apologize for being fit? This is their profession, and this is the penultimate [sic] expression of their profession. And it can make models. It made Heidi’s [Klum] career.
Elsewhere in the interview, he claimed that other designers believed Victoria’s Secret models were “too fat” in 1999 and 2000. “Progress gets made, and part of what’s happened in our show is that the girls have just continued to get more physically fit,” Razek said. “We don’t tell them to; they compete with one another and they work hard, they work in pairs, they work in threes. Many of them work out at the same gyms; they have complex routines. They shouldn’t have to apologize for that.”
It wasn’t a good look, and after the 2018 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Ashley Graham called out Victoria’s Secret by posting photos on Instagram of her walking the runway in her Ashley Graham for Addition Elle lingerie, captioned “#BeautyBeyondSize.”
In December 2018, she told People, “For me, beauty has always been beyond size. This is about using women who look different because we all look different, and we need to praise that difference about us. That is what is beautiful; it’s that we’re not all created the same. So I am just so happy that I actually make lingerie for women who want to feel sexy and who want to feel accepted.”
The brand has taken strides to fix this body diversity problem, after sales plummeted in 2019 and the runway show was cancelled in the same year.
Ali Tate Cutler became the first plus-sized model in a Victoria’s Secret lingerie campaign in 2019. The size 14 model told E! News at the time, “I feel like they are headed in the right direction and they are listening to their audience who have requested to see more women of diverse shapes and sizes. I think if they continue to head in that direction, they will be on to a jackpot because that is reflective of what the average woman is in America.”
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returned in 2024, featuring plus-sized model Ashley Graham. “At first, when they asked me to be in the show, I was a little bit hesitant because there has been a brand DNA that’s been very hard to be a part of for so many years, for so many of us, especially growing up with the brand and not always fitting in the brand and the brand not making sizes for us,” Graham told People in 2024.
She added, “When I talked to the head of Victoria’s Secret, and they assured me that their hope and their plan is to have extended sizes, I said, yes, so that there could be more women that could see themselves represented on the runway because we did not see that during Fashion Month.”
Graham also walked in 2025 and is walking in the 2026 show.
