For the first time in 24 years, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show has been cancelled. Supermodel Shanina Shaik (pictured) revealed the cancellation in an interview with Australia’s The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately the Victoria’s Secret show won’t be happening this year,” she said. “It’s something I’m not used to because every year around this time I’m training like an angel. But I’m sure in the future something will happen, which I’m pretty sure about.”
The Australian supermodel first appeared on the Victoria’s Secret catwalk in 2011 and has walked in the show several times since then.
Shaik, 28, was optimistic about the cancellation. “I’m sure they’re trying to work on branding and new ways to do the show because it’s the best show in the world,” she told The Telegraph.
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show launched in 1995 and quickly became a pop culture phenomenon.
Supermodel who walked the VS runway last year alone include supermodels Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Behati Prinsloo, Gigi Hadid and Adriana Lima.
Other supermodels who earned their angel wings in the past include Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, and Miranda Kerr.
But the wildly popular VS fashion show has come under fire from social justice activists who criticized the leading women’s lingerie brand for excluding male-to-female transgenders and full figured women from the runway.
Last year, Victoria’s Secret exec Ed Razek apologized for comments he made about not casting transgender models, such as this model who walked the Carmen Liu catwalk for the world’s first transgender lingerie brand in February.
Victoria’s Secret chief marketing officer apologized in an interview with Vogue after saying he didn’t think the show should include MTF transgenders or plus-size models because Victoria’s Secret appeals to male fantasies.
“If you’re asking if we’ve considered putting a transgender model in the show or looked at putting a plus-size model in the show, we have,” he told Vogue. “We attempted to do a television special for plus-sizes (in 2000). No one had any interest in it, still don’t.”
In a statement he shared to the company’s Twitter account in November 2018, Razek said, “To be clear, we absolutely would cast a transgender model in our 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.”
According to social media posts, the company chose to cancel this year’s show rather than cave to the pressure to feature transgender or plus-size models on the catwalk.
Photos by Terry Scott/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
