Bella Hadid in the 2018 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show Holiday Special.Photo: Jeff Neira/Getty Images
Bella Hadidis back withVictoria’s Secret, but her return was not something she took lightly.
The supermodel (who first worked with the brand for its2015 PINK holiday campaignand landed spots on the covetedVictoria’s Secret Fashion Showroster in 2016, 2017 and 2018) is currently starring in the2021 holiday campaignand was just named its latestVS Collective Memberfor the newly revamped lingerie giant, which announcedmajor rebrandingefforts earlier this year.
In June, the brand replaced its iconic Angels with a new set of spokeswomen under its new initiative, the VS Collective, including actressPriyanka Chopra Jonas, soccer starMegan Rapinoe, Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio (who became the brand’sfirst transgender model in 2019) and many more who “share a common passion to drive positive change.”
Victoria’s Secret
According to the article, at a 2018 fitting while Hadid was being measured for underwear, Razek allegedly said “forget the panties” and went on to remark about her “perfect” breasts, theTimesreported.
At the time, Razek denied the allegations, telling theTimesin an email that “the accusations in this reporting are categorically untrue, misconstrued or taken out of context,” adding, “I’ve been fortunate to work with countless, world-class models and gifted professionals and take great pride in the mutual respect we have for each other.”
Hadid says it took her “almost a year and a half” to take a meeting with the brand. “Even having that conversation was very complicated for me because of the way that I had felt in the past,” she toldMarie Claire. “But they came to me with a big presentation about everything that they’ve changed, the way that they’re moving forward with not only body diversity, but diversity of women in general.”
Bella Hadid at the 2017 Victoria’s Secret fashion show.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
“I know firsthand how Victoria’s Secret used to make me feel, and now, going onto set every day, there is just an energy that’s switched,” Hadid added. “I would never work for a company that not only made me feel a type of way, but made the world feel a type of way, until I knew for a fact that real change was going to be made.”
Hadid famously said in 2019that she never felt “really sexy” or “powerful"on a runway until walking in Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty show, and opened up about her experience walking in for Victoria’s Secret, saying it was “something that was really hard on a woman to put all your worth in the hands of, like, three men who essentially tell you if you’re good enough or not. I think that’s kind of what was wrong with that whole situation in general. It was a standard that was really not attainable.”
Now, thanks to help through therapy, she’s at a place where she feels “like I own my body again” and her life isn’t revolved around wondering “how I was going to lose that weight for one of those shows.”
“I wake up mostly every morning not feeling like the Bella that everyone else sees,” she said. “I do the work every morning to be able to get to that point. And sometimes I don’t even get there. But it really is about keeping that grounding and that love for yourself and understanding that your worth comes from you and not from anybody else.”
source: people.com
