For six years there was no Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at all. Two years after its return, the brand has gone a step further and brought back the thing that once defined the event: the Fantasy Bra. On Sunday 18 October it reappeared on the runway in Los Angeles, made by the New York jeweller Jacob & Co., valued at $50 million and worn not by a veteran Angel but by Kylie Jenner, in her first Victoria's Secret show. Elle called it one of the night's biggest moments, and the casting divided opinion as much as the diamonds dazzled.
A show built for the stream
Victoria's Secret staged the 2026 show in Los Angeles and streamed it live at 4.30pm Pacific time on YouTube and across its Instagram and TikTok accounts, according to the brand's press room. It was the show's first return to Los Angeles in 19 years, National Jeweler and Elle both reported, and it took place at Sony Pictures Studios. For the first time, the brand also screened it live in 10 AMC cinemas, and through September it announced new ways for fans to win "a seat to the show" every Thursday on its social channels.
The music was billed as an all-women line-up: Katseye, Megan Moroney, Megan Thee Stallion and Tate McRae, according to the press room.
Four seasons on one runway
This was Adam Selman's second show in charge. Selman, executive vice president and chief creative officer of Victoria's Secret & Co., organised the runway into chapters, one for each season, Elle reported. "The show is so big that a simple idea is a great starting place," he told the magazine.
The show opened with Bella Hadid, back on the runway in a sheer petal-green miniskirt and wings sprouting flowers and fauna, followed by Adriana Lima, Ashley Graham and Alex Consani; Anok Yai wore a tiny mini dress covered in petals. "Florals for spring, groundbreaking, I know," Selman joked. A chapter called "Vintage Victoria" then sent out bias-cut slips in pastels that, Elle wrote, nodded to the brand's late-1990s and early-2000s archive. "Fans always say they love that the brand used to do a lot of event dressing and slip dressing and fun, colorful prints," Selman said.
The brand also used the night to crown a new Angel. Solange Omon, the winner of Angels Among Us, a docuseries following a nationwide search, made her runway debut in black-and-white lace, gilded wings and a cape, according to Elle.
Selman framed the whole event as a negotiation with nostalgia. "I'm the first one to love nostalgia," he told Elle before the show. "But I also need to chart [the show] into new territory. A lot of what the fans say they want is 20 or 25 years ago, which culture has moved on from. How do you give it to them in a modern context?"
The Fantasy Bra, by the numbers
Victoria's Secret says the first was worn by Claudia Schiffer in 1996 (in a print advertisement, National Jeweler notes), and the last to appear on the runway was worn by Elsa Hosk in 2018. Over the years the brand has worked with jewellers including Harry Winston, Mouawad and London Jewelers on the pieces.
The 2026 version is the most valuable yet worn on the show's runway, according to National Jeweler, which published the jeweller's figures:
- Value: $50 million.
- Metal: 18-carat gold throughout, cast by the lost-wax method; there is no fabric.
- Stones: 4,410 diamonds totalling 1,373 carats, centred on a 75.54-carat fancy vivid yellow diamond, flanked by two round white diamonds totalling 11.85 carats. The 91 larger white stones include Jacob & Co.'s own Angel cut.
- Construction: about 3,218 individual components, designed so the piece moves like lingerie on the body.
- Time: more than 1,000 hours of work by 15 artisans.
Victoria's Secret says the design draws on Jacob & Co.'s Rare Touch jewellery collection, which shapes precious metal to move with the body "like fabric". "Jacob understands that a Fantasy Bra has to be spectacular, but what made him the right partner is that he designs for the person wearing it," Selman said in the brand's announcement. For everyone else there is a Fantasy Bra-inspired lingerie top with a removable crystal tassel fringe on the Victoria's Secret website, priced at $398, National Jeweler reported.
Why the casting divided opinion
Wearing the Fantasy Bra has traditionally been treated as an honour for one of the show's best-known models. Giving it to Jenner, a first-time show model, delighted some fans and frustrated others, BBC News reported, with commenters on the brand's Instagram questioning why she was chosen over professional models.
Selman told Vogue that Jenner was picked as a "cultural powerhouse", the BBC reported. "Kylie really extends beyond fashion, beyond culture, beyond TV, beyond one singular thing," he said. Joel Marlinarson, a social-media strategist interviewed by the BBC, read it as a deliberate bet on attention: brands, he said, are "prioritising who's going to bring the most eyeballs, as opposed to who fits the cookie cutter definition of a model".
The debate is a reminder of how far the show has travelled. As the BBC recalled, it was scrapped after its 2018 edition drew low ratings and criticism that it was sexist, outdated and lacked diversity, and it returned in 2024 promising to "celebrate all women". Bringing back its most extravagant symbol, on a reality star, suggests how confident the brand now feels about that reset, and of how much of the show is now designed to travel as clips.
What it means for the runway
Most of the season's runway news came from Paris, Milan and London (see our reports on Paris, Milan and London). The Victoria's Secret show is a different kind of runway: less a collection than a live broadcast, built around performers, casting and a single headline object. "This really is a mashup of fashion, culture, product, entertainment," Selman told Elle. On the evidence of this year's reaction, the formula still makes people talk; whether it sells more lingerie is a question for the brand's next results.
Featured image: Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped for this page; the cropped version is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
