Model Bella Hadid recently opened up about how she truly felt walking on several fashion show runways, presumably including the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show where she appeared three times.
As reported by WWD, the model, 23, spoke at the Vogue Fashion Festival in Paris on Friday and discussed her experience wearing lingerie on stage in fashion shows. She “confessed that the first time she felt comfortable modeling lingerie was for Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty extravaganza during New York Fashion Week in September, in which she performed alongside models of all ages, shapes and races,” per the outlet.
“Rihanna’s amazing. For me, that was the first time on a runway that I felt really sexy. Because when I first did Fenty, I was doing other lingerie shows and I never felt powerful on a runway, like, in my underwear,” she told Loïc Prigent at an event with an audience at the Hôtel Potocki.
Rihanna reportedly told Hadid to walk however she wanted and had her wear a yellow lingerie outfit with a scarf and long, sheer tights.
“I like being another character. I think at this point I don’t necessarily love being myself sometimes,” she continued. “Sometimes on the runway you get either nervous or you forget how your legs move.”
Hadid also discussed the toll that her lifestyle and career has taken on her mental health.
“For a while I just didn’t want to talk about it, and I’ve gone through a lot in the past few years with my health,” she said. “I feel guilty for being able to live this incredible life, have the opportunities that I do, but somehow still be depressed. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I would cry every single morning, I would cry during my lunch breaks, I would cry before I slept. I was very emotionally unstable for a while when I was working 14-hour days for four months straight as an 18-year-old. I think I just wanted to breathe a little bit. And so it kind of put me in a spiral,” she said.
“I just hope I can help in any way I can. I feel like I would be doing a disservice to myself if I didn’t speak about something such as mental health, because that’s pretty much what I’ve been going through for the past five years very intensely. Now we’re here and we’re good, but it took a while,” she said.
The Victoria’s Secret underwear brand recently altered its marketing and chose to adhere to a more culturally acceptable appearance.
As The New York Times noted, in place of the typical “Angels,” there “are seven women famous for their achievements and not their proportions. They include Megan Rapinoe, the 35-year-old pink-haired soccer star and gender equity campaigner; Eileen Gu, a 17-year-old Chinese American freestyle skier and soon-to-be Olympian; the 29-year-old biracial model and inclusivity advocate Paloma Elsesser, who was the rare size 14 woman on the cover of Vogue; and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, a 38-year-old Indian actor and tech investor.”
As The Daily Wire reported, “Former Victoria’s Secret model Bridget Malcolm, 29, ripped into the company after it jettisoned its traditional cast of ‘Angels’ and decided to hire seven ‘diverse spokeswomen’ including transgender and plus-size models. Malcom ripped the company for its apparent capitulation to woke standards, snapping, ‘Your performative allyship is a joke.’”
Speaking in a TikTok video with the title, “Too little, too late Victoria’s Secret,” Malcom tried to put on a small 30A size bra that she had worn in 2016, then said, “I found my bra from the 2016 Victoria’s Secret fashion show. It is a size 30A. I am now a size 34B. Which is healthy for me. I was rejected from the show in 2017 by (former Victoria’s Secret executive) Ed Razek. He said my body did not look good enough. I wore a size 30B at that point. Look how big it was on me. The sadness behind my eyes from the 2016 show breaks my heart.”