Victoria’s Secret turns to creators to build buzz for its fashion show

For years, getting into the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show meant being a model, celebrity or particularly well-connected industry insider. Now, it can also mean being a highly active member of the brand’s creator community.

Ahead of the brand’s fall show — the date still unknown, although last year’s was in October — Victoria’s Secret is dangling access to the buzzy event as a reward for the people posting, selling and talking about the brand online. Its VS & PINK Creator Program has grown to more than 16,000 members since launching in October 2023, spanning loyal customers, emerging creators and established influencers.

Through the tiered program, creators can earn higher affiliate commissions, gift cards and features on the brand’s social channels, along with invitations to events and brand experiences. Top advocates were also invited to attend the 2025 Fashion Show, and now the brand is taking it a step further.

“The power of social media today means anyone can go viral and drive widespread impact, regardless of their follower count,” said Elizabeth Preis, chief marketing and customer officer at Victoria’s Secret & Co. “This underscores the heartbeat of the program and how we continue to celebrate our community in everything we do.”

In April, in preparation for its 2026 Fashion Show, Victoria’s Secret launched Angels Among Us, a nationwide search for its next Angel. More than 100,000 people participated in the social media-based application process, according to the company, generating more than 1.7 billion media impressions.

Across Instagram and TikTok, as entrants progressed to different stages of the search, Angels Among Us became a content series built around invitation emails, reaction videos, runway walks and casting results. Applicants documenting the process included Jakiyra Hambright, who has 517 Instagram followers; Czech presenter Kristýna Svěchotová, with 13,200 Instagram followers; actress and model Amber Lott, with 21,400 Instagram followers; dancer Sierra Rae, with 42,300 TikTok followers; Jelissa Gilart, with 181,000 Instagram followers; and Rachel Carlisle, with 234,300 on TikTok. Carlisle’s pinned casting video reached 5.4 million views, while Rae’s post sharing her rejection email reached — in which she states that it had been “a blessing to make it that far” — saw just 336 likes.

In-person castings were staged in malls across Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and the Chicago area. Videos captured onsite show applicants walking black-and-pink runways in central atriums, with cameras and judges at floor level and shoppers watching from surrounding balconies. The open setup turned a traditional casting into a public brand event and gave applicants ready-made footage to share before, during and after the audition.

The public nature of the casting also prompted some skepticism on TikTok – commenters on one critical post with half a million views questioned whether the mall format represented a real route to the runway or was primarily a marketing activation by the brand.

This year, Victoria’s Secret plans to tell applicants’ stories over the coming months, building up to the Fashion Show throughout the summer and fall.

“The strong interest and social engagement around Angels Among Us reinforces our belief that the Fashion Show is more than a single moment,” CEO Hillary Super said on the company’s June 2 earnings call. “We are deepening our customer engagement as we build the Fashion Show into an ongoing franchise.”

The creator program gives Victoria’s Secret an existing network through which to distribute that story. Operated through an ongoing partnership with advocacy platform Duel, the program is designed to identify and reward existing fans of the brand, rather than recruit creators only for individual paid campaigns.

“The program objective is to help Victoria’s Secret identify, engage and reward brand advocates, turning genuine brand love into an always-on community of creators producing authentic, social-first content,” Duel said in a statement.

The appeal is easy to understand. Access has become a form of currency in creator culture, particularly when the reward is something followers recognize as culturally valuable. A creator may begin with product gifting or an affiliate link, but the possibility of being featured by the brand, invited to an event or brought to the Fashion Show gives the relationship somewhere to go.

Victoria’s Secret’s 2025 show offered an early test. The company engaged directly with thousands of creators, generating more than 1,700 pieces of content. One gifting video reached 2.58 million views, while more than 150 creators attended VIP store events.

The majority of gifting recipients posted, according to Victoria’s Secret, although the company did not disclose a precise percentage.

“By inviting people into the brand during such an iconic pop-culture moment, we saw gifting content go viral,” Preis said.

The model also accounts for the fact that brands can no longer reliably predict what will perform online. A creator with a small following can produce a post that travels farthest, while a larger influencer may fail to break out beyond their existing audience.

“We’ve got some people with a few thousand followers that are the biggest drivers of income for these massive, massive brands,” said Paul Archer, CEO of Duel. “And they’re never the ones that the brands pick.”

This unpredictability helps explain why Victoria’s Secret is building a community of more than 16,000 creators, rather than relying on a small roster of recognizable names. Not every member needs to perform the same function.

Some creators use storefronts and affiliate links to generate sales. Others produce images and videos that the brand can amplify. Still others provide feedback or help Victoria’s Secret show up within smaller online communities that a traditional campaign may never reach.

Preis said the company evaluates the program across both sales and loyalty. Victoria’s Secret tracks storefront activity, affiliate links and conversion, while also using the community for real-time feedback, focus groups and in-person experiences.

“Advocacy is most effective when it drives mindshare, wallet share and market share for a business,” she said.

For Victoria’s Secret, opening the Fashion Show ecosystem to fans and creators also carries symbolic weight. The show was once associated with a tightly managed version of glamour, built around a small and highly visible cast of Angels like Candice Swanepoel and Miranda Kerr. Its newer form still relies on spectacle, fantasy and celebrity, but the surrounding story is becoming more participatory, according to Preis.

That does not mean every creator becomes an Angel or gets a front-row seat. The exclusivity still matters for the brand. The difference is that the brand is creating more visible routes toward access and recognition.

It also appears to be helping Victoria’s Secret reach younger customers. During its first quarter, the company recorded double-digit growth in new customer acquisition and continued to gain share in intimates among 18- to 24-year-olds. Net sales increased 15% year over year to $1.56 billion, while comparable sales rose 13%.

On the earnings call, Super said app downloads were up by more than 50%, while customer testimonials and community voices around the company’s products were four times higher than a year earlier.

“Our community is powerful,” she said.

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