Forget the big names: fashion brands pivot to less-familiar faces

As a kid in high school in a backwater town of NSW, the only reason I knew about Victoria’s Secret was because of the underwear brand’s network of “Angels” – a collection of models who walked a runway show annually. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I could not imagine a more glamorous setting than a Victoria’s Secret store, which had not yet reached Australia. There must, I figured, be something extremely cool about this brand and its lacy offerings, especially if mononymic superstars like Gisele, Heidi, Miranda and Karlie believed in it.

With hindsight, the sheen of Victoria’s Secret has become more of a stain. Once considered the pinnacle of a model’s career – Gisele Bündchen reportedly earned more than $US25 million ($38 million) from her seven years with the company – given what we now know about how it operated, and the extremely unhealthy lengths models went to in preparing for the show (in some cases, not even drinking water for days in the lead-up), it’s not quite the top-shelf achievement I once imagined.