For hopefuls, being Victoria’s Secret model is a dream
This is how an angel earns her wings. First, she is born, in someplace like Belarus or Florianopolis, the spot in southern Brazil where an awful lot of folks with German names fetched up over the centuries, or, well, Saskatchewan.
Then the angel grows up pretty. Next, the angel is discovered, most likely in a mall.
The angel, at this point, does not realize she is an angel, because the process of becoming an angel requires time and guidance and support and miracles and, OK, occasionally a sleazy boyfriend, as well as a decision at some point by Steven Meisel, or by some other star-making fashion photographer, to choose a woman from among the thousands who would gladly sign away their firstborn for a chance to appear in front of his lens.
Although it is doubtless the dream of untold numbers of hopefuls to be discovered at a Victoria’s Secret open call some day — their beauty so radiant that they rise above the ranks of ordinary flesh-and-blood humans and appear as dazzling supernovas in underwear and stripper heels — the truth is that those destined to be cast in the coveted role of a Victoria’s Secret angel are not drawn from the general population. There is no democracy in angel land.
“We cast 30 models, but 10 times that many are sent to us by the agencies to be considered,” Edward Razek, the chief marketing officer for the Limited Brand, the parent company of the lingerie powerhouse, said last week before a casting session for this year’s Victoria’s Secret show, which will be televised Nov. 30 to 11 million people in 185 countries. It will be taped before a more modest crowd in New York on Nov. 11.
“And 100 times that many would want to,” Razek said. “That’s why I hate castings, because I’m basically a softy and I hate the broken hearts and I hate saying no.”
As it happens, “no” is seldom heard at a Victoria’s Secret casting, at least not within earshot of the hopefuls. What the aspirants instead hear, during the roughly 120 seconds each is given to present herself to a specially selected panel, are phrases polite and generic enough to be anodyne.
They hear, “Lovely.” They hear, “Thank you for coming.” They hear, “Do it again, please, with a little more energy.”
The people who spoke these words one chilly fall morning, on the 12th floor of an office building in Midtown, under lighting that flattered no one, included Razek and Monica Mitro, the executive producer of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show; Alexander Werz, a fashion show director; John Pfeiffer, a casting director; and Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou and Dan May, two London-based editors (Harper’s Bazaar and the luxury quarterly 10 Magazine) who somehow eke out time in between intercontinental jet crossings to serve as highly paid stylists for global brands.
There were other professionals in the room — production people and a photographer and a small group of assistants who stood beside a wall of model headshots. But the crucial people, the ones deciding the fate of the angels, sat at a folding table about 10 long strides away from a makeshift privacy screen created from a rack of Victoria’s Secret panties and bras.
Behind that screen, for close to three hours, some of the most beautiful beings on the planet, one after another, stripped out of their street wear and underclothes and changed into a generic audition outfit consisting of a satin finish bra, a pair of lace bikini panties and champagne-colored platform heels.
Exiting the makeshift dressing area, these women then walked toward the table casually, or as casually as a nearly naked person can under the circumstances, and shook hands with the Victoria’s Secret crew.
“What people don’t realize is that they’re rarer by far than superstar athletes,” Razek said of women who fit precise but unwritten physical parameters for becoming a Victoria’s Secret angel. “The numbers of people who can do this are probably under 100 in the world. And in the show it’s only 30 girls.” (Actually, there are 33 this year.)
Anyway, people do realize. And, as with most disagreeable facts, they block that one out.
This is worth noting because the fantasy (by merely laying out $53 for a Miraculous Multi-way Gel-Curve Bra one will somehow be transformed into a winged creature resembling Gisele Bündchen or Heidi Klum or Helena Christensen or Adriana Lima) is so powerful that the Limited, Victoria Secret’s parent company, posted a 12-percent increase in comparable sales in September over the same period a year ago.
That growth, industry analysts said, was led by the Victoria’s Secret division, which itself posted a 13-percent year-over-year increase. What is more, the company’s October results, to be posted today, are expected to be stronger still. Call it the uplifting Gel-Curve effect.
Nobody that morning was thinking about any of that.
“With the smile, the hello, the walk, they get maybe two minutes,” to make an impression, said Razek, who has worked for the Limited since the early 1980s and who is notably tan and whose enviable shock of graying hair closely matched the salt and pepper flecks in his custom-made socks. “Maybe it’s not even that much.”
“This all looks straightforward, but it’s not,” said Neophitou-Apostolou, the editor and stylist. “It’s not just women of a certain shape or size who can do this, although you might think so. And it’s not such an obvious proposition,” to choose from among so many seemingly flawless female specimens those who will best make the transformation to the status of mythic lingerie seraphim. Few are called, and fewer still are chosen to wear the strap-on wings of a Victoria’s Secret angel.
“The girls actually dream about it,” said Mitro, referring to the wearing of feathers.