I grew up obsessed with the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I had my favourite angels, my favourite performers, and even my favourite random moments from the show. It was so ingrained into the cultural fabric of my YouTube algorithm. And of course, it did subconsciously feed a vision of what I would have to look like to be desirable and beautiful after I became a certain age.

And now I am a certain age, and you would expect a brand’s philosophy to expand and grow just like I have, but apparently not. After a six year long cancellation, the Victoria’s Secret Show came back in 2024, vowing to be more inclusive, especially when it came to the body types that would be strutting down the runway. And after this year's show that happened on October 18, I think it’s safe to say that the brand doesn’t really care about body diversity as much as it claimed to, once it was back. Everybody can have their views, but after watching that show, I can say with gritted and almost broken teeth, that skinny is unfortunately back.

On some brighter side, the show did have a number of South Asian models on the ramp this year. Making her debut this year was Ravleen Verghese, a model from Kerala. Alongside her, was Luna Yohannan, New York born model with Malayali and Dominican heritage. English-Indian model Neelam Gill returned for the third time to the pink carpet and Sri Lankan model Elina Gunawardena made history by being the first model to walk the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. This representation is important, because people representing people from all ethnicities are beautiful. 

But is it enough?

There is a dark underbelly that runs through companies like Victoria's Secret — specifically how they treat their labourers. Victoria Secret itself, has been accused of mistreating and not being answerable to the labourers' extremely inhumane and terrible working conditions. Paramasivam Pushpalatta, was a worker at the Brandix factory in Sri Lanka, which is the country’s biggest apparel exporter. On October 10th 2025, she started experiencing dizziness and chest pain during work and was not allowed to leave and forced to complete her shift. She ended up going to the hospital and unfortunately passed away. Her family and other unions strongly affirmed that her death could be completely avoided but she was forced to comply with the factory rules to hit her daily target. Victoria’s Secret has completely denied any wrongdoing on Brandix or their part. 

So yes, representation but at what cost? 

Accountability? Human treatment of your own employees on whose backs your company runs?

Pushpalatha’s story is not a one-off. Asia produces more than 60% of the world’s garments, and over 15 million people work in the industry across the continent. India’s legal minimum wage is only about 31% of a living wage, and Bangladesh’s is around 37%. Yet production wages scarcely exceed 3% of the shop price. When Bangladeshi workers protested in 2024, four were killed and roughly 40,000 faced criminal charges.

In 2013, Rana Plaza collapsed in Dhaka, killing 1,134 workers and injuring 2,500 more. Even afterwards, about a dozen brands that made products there never paid compensation to the families. At Brandix itself, during the 2020 Covid outbreak, many sick workers were sent back to the line because orders needed fulfilling. After Pushpalatha died, the company offered her husband about $552, roughly three months of her earnings. A 2018 investigation of 53 H&M and Gap supplier factories across five Asian countries found women at daily risk of violence, with retaliation for reporting it.

Pressure does work sometimes, like when Thai workers who sewed for Victoria’s Secret won $8.3 million in back pay after 13 months of protest. But justice is usually delivered late and often not proportionally to the atrocities subjected.

So why does this keep happening, especially in countries like India? Part of the answer is simple arithmetic. When millions of people need work and jobs are scarce, any one worker can be replaced by the next person in line. A worker who asks for a break, a raise or a union is easy to let go, becasue they are dispensable. That is why a woman feeling dizzy and chest pain can be told to finish her shift.

But population is only half the story. The other half is the buyers. As the Clean Clothes Campaign puts it, the global economic model drives prices down and pits one low-wage country against another. A factory that refuses a brand’s price risks losing the order to a cheaper one next door, so the cost gets squeezed out of the people at the bottom. The people stitching the clothes can’t set their own terms, because the price is decided far away.

None of this is new, and that is exactly why it needs repeating. The fix isn’t out of reach either. Making a living wage possible could add as little as 1% to the retail price, which is 10 cents on a $10 t-shirt. And when brands are legally bound to act, things change: after Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh Accord led to dramatic improvements in fire and building safety. Even now, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights has sent Victoria’s Secret a compliance notice over Pushpalatha’s death.

We can’t fix a labour market overnight, but we can ask who made our clothes, and how they were treated. These brands are mammoths and ecosystems in themselves and they exist in a world they have built piece by piece. The only thing we can keep doing, even if it feels like shouting in the void, is keep trying to hold them accountable and to spotlight the inhumane conditions that they continue to subject their workers to in the name of their bottom line. Because yes, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is a cultural touchstone in pop and fashion culture, but it’s necessary to call out the baggage it comes with and compel them to do better.

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