Gisele Bündchen Just Turned the Victoria’s Secret Show Into a Runway Cliffhanger
She didn’t walk, but the former Angel appeared twice in pink lingerie, blew a kiss to the camera and promised fans would be seeing “more of me real soon.”
Victoria’s Secret wanted a fashion show. Gisele Bündchen gave it a season finale.
The former supermodel made a surprise appearance during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in Los Angeles on Oct. 18, appearing in two pre-taped videos that managed to create the exact kind of glamorous suspense the brand has been trying to bottle for years. She wore a pink lingerie set, lounged in a matching Victoria’s Secret robe at a beachside villa and looked completely at home in the company’s signature fantasy world.
But she did not walk. And that, naturally, became the whole point.
In the first video, shown just before Bella Hadid opened the show at Sony Pictures Studios, Bündchen asked viewers, “Are you ready for the show?” Later, after the runway had wrapped, she returned to the screen with a bowl of popcorn and a much more mischievous message: “Wasn’t that amazing? You’re going to be seeing more of me real soon.” Then came the wink and blown kiss—the sort of sign-off that makes a perfectly pleasant cameo feel like a locked door with a very expensive key dangling from it.
Gisele’s Non-Walk Was the Night’s Biggest Walk
Fans had apparently been waiting for her to appear in person, and one viewer summed up the mood after the show: “I waited the whole show for Gisele, and she didn’t walk,” accompanied by a crying emoji. It is a very 2020s kind of celebrity moment: a person can dominate an event without technically stepping onto its main stage.
That absence may have been more effective than a runway return. Had Bündchen emerged in wings and heels, the story would have been immediate and complete. Instead, Victoria’s Secret gave viewers a tease, a visual callback and a promise with no release date attached. The result was less “surprise guest” and more “to be continued.”
It also placed Bündchen in a particularly potent position. She was not competing with the night’s performers or models; she was hovering above the spectacle, a former Angel reminding everyone that she still knows precisely how to make an entrance—even when the entrance is a video package.
The Angel Era Is Still Catnip
Bündchen last walked in the Victoria’s Secret show in 2006, a detail that gives this moment its delicious anniversary math. She stepped away from fashion shows entirely in 2020, making any suggestion of a runway comeback feel less like a routine booking and more like a pop-culture event.
That is especially true because Bündchen has previously sounded very clear about not wanting one. In a 2022 interview with Elle, she said designers asked her every year to return but that she had “zero desire” to do the runway. She explained that she preferred modeling for editorial and pre-taped shoots, where she could “create a character and play that role for the day.”
Which is, conveniently, exactly what she did here. The villa, the robe, the popcorn, the camera-ready wink: this was not a model reluctantly being dragged back into an old job. It was Bündchen controlling the frame and playing the role of Gisele Bündchen, global icon and possible keeper of Victoria’s Secret’s next big surprise.
People change their minds, of course. So do brands. Victoria’s Secret has spent the past several years trying to rethink the spectacle around its fashion show, expanding the lineup and folding in a broader mix of celebrities, performers and public figures. The current version still wants the old glamour, but it also wants the internet’s attention—and Bündchen remains one of the few people who can summon both with a single raised eyebrow.
The Timing Is Doing a Lot of Work
Her cameo arrived alongside a packed celebrity scene that included Megan Thee Stallion, Tate McRae, Nicole Kidman, Tinashe, Victoria Monét, Lisa Rinna, Kris Jenner and Timothée Chalamet, among others. There were models, musicians, reality stars and fashion-world fixtures everywhere you looked. Yet Bündchen’s appearance cut through because it carried history.
She is not simply another famous person in a glamorous room. She is deeply associated with the Victoria’s Secret runway at the height of its original cultural power, when the Angel image was less a branding exercise than a full-blown celebrity ecosystem. Her return—even a partial, pre-recorded one—turns the show into a conversation with its own past.
And the styling was hardly accidental. Pink lingerie. The pinstriped robe. The villa. The soft-focus luxury. It was a visual time machine with better lighting, designed to trigger recognition before the first sentence landed. The popcorn was the cheeky modern update: Gisele watching the show too, as if she were one of us, except “one of us” does not generally have a beachside villa and a career-defining relationship with the Angel wings.
Her personal life also makes the moment feel newly distinct from her earlier Victoria’s Secret years. Bündchen is now a mother of three—she shares Benjamin, 16, and Vivian, 13, with Tom Brady, and has a 20-month-old with Joaquim Valente—and has increasingly been associated with wellness and life beyond the runway. This was not a young model being introduced to the world. It was an established star deciding how much of an old chapter she wanted to reopen.
So… Is She Coming Back?
The only thing Bündchen actually promised was that fans would be seeing more of her soon. That could mean another Victoria’s Secret appearance, a campaign, a special segment or simply more of the kind of polished fashion work she has said she enjoys. Neither she nor the brand has spelled out what comes next.
But the wording was enough to send the internet into its favorite state: convinced that a major reveal is hiding just off-camera. The show did not give viewers the runway return they wanted. It gave them something arguably more powerful—a reason to keep watching.
For now, Gisele remains in the wings, literally and strategically. She has already proved she can make the biggest cameo of the night without walking a single step. If those Angel wings do come back out, Victoria’s Secret has made sure the world will be waiting.
Jasmine Tookes Is Not Letting One Heavy-Wings Clip Rewrite Her Victoria’s Secret Runway Moment
A viral backstage-ish snippet made it look like the model was battling her angel wings. Tookes would like everyone to watch the actual walk.
There are two kinds of Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show footage: the kind that makes everyone look impossibly polished, and the kind that reminds you the angels are, in fact, carrying several pounds of theatrical hardware while trying to hit their marks in heels.
Jasmine Tookes has now found herself starring in the second category. A clip from the 2026 show began circulating after she was heard saying the wings she had just worn were “so heavy,” prompting the internet to frame the moment as a tiny runway survival thriller. The caption on one Instagram video went further, claiming Tookes looked like she was “fighting for her life.”
Her response was less fashion-world meltdown, more please-watch-the-whole-thing.
“Oh my god lol,” Tookes commented under the video on Oct. 18. “This is awful..you caught me on the way back when i was almost off the stage…” She added, “Gave it my all going to the camera if you watch the real show.”
Translation: the internet caught the exhale, not the performance. A dangerous mistake when the performance involves giant pink angel wings, a multicolored bikini look and a runway built for maximum spectacle.
The wings were enormous. The walk was still working.
Tookes appeared in a look that paired a multicolored bikini with a sequined magenta cover-up over her bottom half and a set of oversized, tinsel-covered pink wings. They were not delicate little feather accessories designed to disappear into the background. They were the kind of wings that arrive before you do, announce themselves to the room and probably require their own transportation plan.
That is precisely why the clipped moment had such a satisfying internet life. The Victoria’s Secret show is engineered around fantasy: glossy lighting, famous faces, lingerie, pop-star energy and enough sparkle to make ordinary physics feel vaguely optional. Then someone says, essentially, these things are heavy, and suddenly the fantasy gets a backstage pass.
Tookes, though, was not presenting the moment as a disaster. She was explaining the edit. According to her comment, the footage caught her near the end of the runway, on her way back and almost off the stage. The part she wanted viewers to see was the walk toward the camera, where she said she “gave it my all.”
And she did return to the runway later in the show, appearing in an all-white lingerie look beneath a beaded cover-up. Whatever strain the wings may have caused, they did not end her evening—or her willingness to do another look in front of a room full of cameras.
Her post-show mood was champagne, not crisis
After the show, Tookes shared a far more celebratory update to her Instagram Stories. “You guys I’m so happy!!!” she wrote on Oct. 18, promising to share “so many fun moments tomorrow.” Then came the most convincing post-runway punctuation imaginable: “Time for some champagne. LOVE YOU ALL.”
She followed with: “What a show.”
That is a very different energy from the dramatic caption attached to the circulating clip. The internet loves a split-second of visible effort because effort is usually edited out of fashion fantasy. But Tookes’ own follow-up makes clear that she experienced the night as a triumph, not a near miss. The wings may have been heavy; the mood was light.
There is also something refreshingly old-school about the whole episode. A model wears an outrageous costume, survives the runway, says something candid offstage and gets turned into a meme before the glitter has even settled. The modern twist is that she can now jump into the comments and provide her own director’s commentary.
The show was a reunion, with a few conspicuous absences
Tookes was part of a particularly loaded Victoria’s Secret lineup that included Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid, Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Candice Swanepoel, Behati Prinsloo, Kylie Jenner, Megan Thee Stallion, Tate McRae, Irina Shayk, Ashley Graham, Paloma Elsesser, Alex Consani and plenty more names familiar to anyone who has ever watched a runway clip turn into a group chat event.
That combination gave the 2026 show the feel of both a comeback and a family reunion: longtime Victoria’s Secret veterans sharing the stage with newer stars, musicians and high-visibility fashion names. Tookes, who has become closely associated with the brand’s most glamorous runway era, fit neatly into that continuity while still giving the night a moment that belonged entirely to her.
But one notable veteran was missing. Miranda Kerr, who made her Victoria’s Secret debut two decades ago and last walked for the brand in 2012, said in a Sept. 17 Instagram post that she had been invited to return. She ultimately decided it was right to “cherish this chapter as it was,” describing the old era with gratitude and sending love to the cast of the new show.
Kerr’s absence and Tookes’ wing-related mini-drama landed on opposite sides of the same fashion conversation. One model chose to preserve a chapter by leaving it in the past. Another stepped into a pair of famously excessive wings, walked the runway, and then had to explain that the unglamorous bit at the end was not the whole story.
Let Jasmine have the last word—and the camera moment
The appeal of the clip is obvious. It punctures the polished mythology just enough to make the spectacle feel human. Models get tired. Costumes are heavy. Even an angel has to make it to the end of the stage.
But the more interesting part is Tookes refusing to let the most awkward three seconds become the headline. She did not deny that the wings were heavy. She simply objected to the idea that a candid comment on the way offstage represented her entire performance.
In a world where every glamorous appearance can be reduced to a reaction gif before the official photos are even posted, that distinction matters. Watch the full runway, she suggested. Look at the walk that came before the sigh. Notice the confidence, the staging and the fact that she carried the look all the way to the camera.
The wings were heavy. The moment was funny. The show went well. And Jasmine Tookes, having completed the assignment in pink tinsel and sequins, would like her highlight reel back.
The Victoria’s Secret After-Party Turned West Hollywood Into One Giant Celebrity Group Chat
Bella Hadid, Tate McRae, Irina Shayk, Alix Earle, Behati Prinsloo and a full supporting cast took the runway energy to The Bird Streets Club.
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show may have ended when the last model left the runway, but Los Angeles was clearly not ready to turn the lights on. After the 2026 spectacle, the angels and their extended celebrity orbit relocated to The Bird Streets Club in West Hollywood, where the guest list became less fashion week seating chart and more “who did everyone text after the show?”
Bella Hadid was there. So were Irina Shayk, Behati Prinsloo, Vittoria Ceretti, Ashley Graham, Cindy Bruna and Alex Consani. Tate McRae, who performed during the lingerie spectacular, joined the after-hours migration alongside Alix Earle, Livvy Dunne, Amelia Gray Hamlin, Delilah Belle Hamlin, Landon Barker, Tyga, Diplo and plenty more familiar faces.
In other words: one runway, several generations of celebrity, a handful of internet-native stars and enough model-off-duty energy to make a normal Los Angeles night feel aggressively underdressed.
The runway was only the opening act
There is a particular kind of celebrity event where the party afterward becomes more culturally legible than the main event. The runway gives everyone a shared backdrop: lights, music, lingerie, choreographed entrances and the official gloss of a major fashion production. The after-party is where the categories blur.
That is exactly what happened here. Models who had just walked the show ended up in the same late-night frame as singers, creators, athletes, DJs and reality-adjacent social stars. McRae moved from performer to party guest. Earle and Quenlin Blackwell represented the creator economy’s front row-to-after-hours pipeline. Livvy Dunne brought sports-world visibility into the mix. Tyga, Diplo and Landon Barker supplied the music-industry connective tissue.
It is not simply a guest list. It is a map of how celebrity works now: runway names, pop names, social names and people famous for being adjacent to other famous people all sharing the same flashbulbs. The old velvet rope has become less of a barrier than a networking diagram.
And because the event took place at The Bird Streets Club, the setting did some of the storytelling before anyone even appeared in a photograph. West Hollywood after midnight is practically its own genre. Add a Victoria’s Secret production, a room full of models and several people whose outfits are likely to be screenshotted before breakfast, and the whole thing starts to feel less like an after-party than a live update from the celebrity ecosystem.
Bella, Irina and Behati brought the headline names
Bella Hadid and Irina Shayk are the sort of names that make a fashion gallery feel instantly major. Their presence gives the night its supermodel voltage, while Behati Prinsloo adds another layer of Victoria’s Secret history to the room. Ashley Graham, Cindy Bruna and Vittoria Ceretti keep the fashion credentials firmly in place, and Alex Consani brings the kind of contemporary star power that makes a traditional model lineup feel newly plugged into the internet.
The appeal is not just that these women are recognizable. It is that each one arrives with a different version of fashion celebrity attached. Hadid is a perennial headline generator. Shayk carries old-school supermodel glamour without looking trapped in it. Prinsloo is directly connected to the brand’s legacy. Graham has long occupied a broader mainstream fashion lane. Consani belongs to a faster, more online era, where personality is part of the runway package.
Put them in the same after-party gallery and the result is a useful reminder that “model off duty” is no longer one uniform look or one narrow kind of fame. It can mean polished, chaotic, glamorous, playful, highly styled or apparently effortless, sometimes within the same camera flash.
The gallery’s structure makes that mix especially fun. It moves from Bella to McRae to Shayk to Ceretti, then through Earle, Graham, Consani and Blackwell before circling back to Prinsloo and a long list of recognizable partygoers. The sequencing feels like a scroll through several different corners of the culture, all landing at the same door.
Then came the internet’s favorite kind of crossover
Alix Earle and Livvy Dunne appearing in the same post-show orbit is the kind of detail that instantly changes the temperature of a celebrity roundup. Both have built enormous visibility through social platforms, but their public lanes are distinct enough that seeing them in a fashion-night setting feels like a crossover episode.
There is also Amelia Gray Hamlin and Nicolai Marciano, listed together in the gallery, plus Kailyn Shepherd and Jonathan “Foodgod” Cheban. The source does not turn either appearance into a romance storyline, and neither should we. Sometimes a shared frame is simply a shared frame. Still, in the modern celebrity industrial complex, even a pairing in a photo caption can make people pause, zoom in and start constructing a group-chat theory.
That is the peculiar pressure of these events: everyone is dressed for attention, and every entrance can be interpreted as a social signal. A night out becomes a soft launch only if the people watching decide it is one. A familiar pairing becomes a talking point because the audience already knows how to read the room—or believes it does.
The lineup also includes Anastasia Karanikolaou, Olivia Ponton, Sabrina Zada, Daiane Sodre, Abby Chamberlain, Trinity Tatum and Kailyn Shepherd, names that keep the party from feeling like a museum of established fame. The atmosphere is not purely legacy fashion, and it is not purely influencer culture. It is the messy middle where both now live.
The real dress code was being seen
Every major fashion event eventually produces a best-dressed conversation, but an after-party gallery offers something more revealing: the social hierarchy of visibility. Who is placed near whom? Which names recur in the caption? Who gets photographed arriving, who gets photographed leaving and who appears as part of the night’s wider cast?
Here, the answer is almost comically expansive. There are angels, supermodels, pop performers, creators, athletes, DJs, actors’ children, musicians and nightlife fixtures. Tyga and Diplo appear alongside the fashion crowd. AE is included in the lineup. Foodgod is there. The party is not trying to preserve the clean boundaries of the runway; it is showing what happens once the show becomes a social event.
That is why these photographs tend to travel. They offer the fantasy of access without requiring anyone to understand the seating plan. You do not need to know who was on the guest list committee. You only need to recognize enough names to feel that something happened, and then notice a few pairings you were not expecting.
The 2026 Victoria’s Secret after-party had all the necessary ingredients: a famous fashion brand, a glamorous Los Angeles venue, models with serious runway history, a performer fresh offstage and a rotating cast of people who dominate different corners of the public imagination. The outfits are the visible story, but the guest list is the real plot.
By the time the party finally wound down in the wee hours, the runway had done its job. It delivered the spectacle. The after-party delivered the crossover. And somewhere between Bella Hadid, Tate McRae, Alix Earle, Behati Prinsloo and Tyga, Victoria’s Secret accidentally staged a very stylish family reunion for the entire celebrity internet.