Jury is out on weapons-grade repositioning of Victoria’s Secret

In what may be the most remarkable turnaround in recent history, the sexiest of sexy brands, Victoria’s Secret, has been repositioned to fly a feminist flag. This naturally raises certain questions. Of what fabric will this flag be made? Lace? Satin? Maybe spandex? Will it feature diamanté in any way?

Important decisions such as this would seem to be well within the capabilities of the brand’s new models, who are called the “VS Collective”. That sounds more like a cool tech start-up than a group of lingerie models, but the collective’s composition is genuinely interesting.

Gone are the models whose main qualifications tended to be their improbable physical measurements. The latest Victoria’s Secret models include US soccer player Megan Rapinoe, body positivity advocate Paloma Elsesser, world champion skier Eileen Gu, actress and entrepreneur Priyanka Chopra Jonas, transgender model and activist Valentina Sampaio, and model/mental health advocate Adut Akech.

At this point it is easy to get distracted by the question of what exactly a model or mental health advocate is, and what exactly they wear to work, but instead we will get back to the nature of this weapons-grade repositioning exercise.

The Victoria’s Secret brand had become toxic. A few years ago the brand told the press that it had no interest in employing plus-size or non-traditional models, only those as closely resembling Heidi Klum as possible. How that has changed.

Dragged into unlovely stories involving Jeffery Epstein, sex scandals and generally endemic misogyny, Victoria’s Secret was fighting for its life in a landscape that had changed dramatically since its glory days of anorexia and spray tan. When brands are all about “purpose”, Victoria’s Secret found itself horrifically out of touch.

Hence the arrival of the VS Collective. Not since the US Democratic Party changed from being the party of southern white slave owners to the party of Barack Obama has a brand made such a shift. And that took about 100 years.

How are we supposed to feel about it? Does it show real and meaningful change in the world? Or is some sort of “greenwashing” in progress?

As we know, the term refers to the distressing habit of carbon-guzzling, planet-wrecking energy companies insisting they are now essentially branches of Greenpeace who care only about sustainable energy solutions. It is what happens when a brand pretends to be something it is not.

I’m in no position to decide whether greenwashing is being practised here. But Victoria’s Secret will soon find out that consumers judge brands by what they do, not what they say they do. The company says its new “purpose” is to “redefine sexiness”. I think it is exceedingly safe to say that in this Tik-Tok, Kardashian, toxic twerking era, sexiness is something that is in dramatic need of redefining.

If Victoria’s Secret can in any way work to make women feel better about their bodies, perhaps we should not be too quick to dismiss the VS Collective out of hand. The group does, after all, contain some truly remarkable women. Who would have thought a gay woman would be hosting a series of Victoria’s Secret-sponsored podcasts about the challenges faced by those not identifying as straight, white, upper middle-class men? Or that a transgender model would be strutting the catwalk for the brand? It is quite astonishing.

And we can be sure the brand didn’t do it voluntarily after a lingerie-related Damascene conversion. It changed because consumers no longer want what Victoria’s Secret has sold in the past. They want change, and that is what they are now being given.

Ultimately, Victoria’s Secret will be judged according to how much it has really changed, and not by what it says. As things stand, the models wearing the Victoria’s Secret product may have changed, but the product itself looks very much the same.

• Davenport is chief creative officer of advertising agency Havas Southern Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.