Valentina Sampaio on Making Victoria's Secret Fashion Show History

A lot of viewers will watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show tonight looking for change. When the annual spectacle started in 1995, it made supermodels out of Tyra Banks, Gisele Bündchen, and Candice Swanepoel—but in the process, the extravaganza further enforced a narrow standard of beauty. By the time the show was called off in 2019, the brand had faced criticism from several directions that its lingerie-filled runways projected a narrow vision of womanhood: one that was too white, too thin, and unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ models. (Offensive comments from former executives only enforced that perception.)

The 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show now promises new faces and a mission: to “reflect who we are today.” Size-inclusive fashion is a reported priority; so is identity, represented in a 2024 vanguard, including Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio. She began modeling for the off-shoot brand Pink in 2019—and, in the process, became the first transgender woman to appear in a Victoria’s Secret campaign. Five years later, she’s getting ready to make history again as one of the first transgender women to model in the label’s official fashion show alongside Alex Cosani.

Sampaio was glowing with excitement when I checked in with her over FaceTime a few days before the show. Her first Victoria’s Secret casting was a “major victory for trans people,” she says. “Being a trans woman often means facing a closed door to people's hearts and minds. So working with Victoria’s Secret meant everything to me.”

Growing up, like many other models-in-training, Sampaio fantasized about pulling on her Angel wings and hitting the glittery catwalk. She faced discrimination at the start of her career in 2014 but persevered; she walked her first runway at São Paolo Fashion Week in 2016, went on to become a L'Oréal ambassador, and eventually wrote history as the first transgender woman on the covers of major magazines from Vogue Paris (in 2017) to Sports Illustrated (in 2020). Victoria's Secret was still exclusionary when her career started and shut down its runway by the time she really got going. Still, Sampaio kept dreaming of walking for the brand one day: "Even if the people told me that it would be impossible, I knew inside my heart that I was going to be a part of it," she says.

The journey made her feel all the more fortunate about making the brand's reimagined runway. Its signature bras, underwear, robes, and pajamas aren't just clothes to Sampaio but symbols. "Lingerie carries a deeply personal meaning for me—as a child, it represented an inspirational symbol of femininity, and it still does," Sampaio says. "Sometimes when I put it on, it reminds me of my journey, of all I had to overcome to be who and where I am today."

Sampaio didn’t want to reveal too much about her debut fashion show look ahead of time but noted it involved a bra, panties, and “a lot of sparkle.”

Before the show, Sampaio had her hair teased into high-volume curls alongside Jasmine Tookes, Gigi Hadid, and Ashley Graham, all while wearing the same baby pink stripe robes and underwire bras. The colors were classic Victoria’s Secret, and the staging could have been straight out of the earliest shows in the ’90s—if not for the diverse group of women wearing them.

The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show will stream live on Amazon Prime and Victoria's Secret's YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. ET.