Over 30 kilos and three metres tall: Gigi Hadid defends Elsa Hosk's runway walk
After Elsa Hosk's walk at the Victoria's Secret show drew mockery online, Gigi Hadid has spoken up. Her argument: today's wings are heavy, huge and anything but aerodynamic.
Photo: Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · Victoria's Secret · youtube.com
Three days after the Victoria's Secret show on 18 October in Los Angeles, Gigi Hadid defended fellow model Elsa Hosk against criticism online. On Threads, a user had compared Hosk's walk with that of Gisele Bündchen. Hadid replied on 21 October that Hosk had excelled. She was "stunning, strong" and carried the wings "like a boss". The critics, Hadid wrote, simply had no clue.
To make her point, Hadid referred to the size of today's wings. According to The Lingerie Museum, citing E! Online, she wrote that they can weigh more than 75 pounds, over 34 kilograms, and stand more than ten feet tall, about three metres. Some are animatronic, none is aerodynamic, and fans along the runway create extra gusts. It takes three men to take the wings off the models, she added. According to IBTimes UK, every model in the show may now wear wings, not only brand ambassadors.
How elaborate the constructions are was described by InStyle the day after the show. One of the sculptural pairs among chief creative officer Adam Selman's designs began as a sketch of asymmetrical shapes, and an artisan in New York brought it to life. The wings were 3D-printed and then chromed at an auto body shop. For Hosk, it was her first appearance in the show since 2018; she had previously walked eight consecutive shows from 2011 to 2018. Victoria's Secret has released the show's finale as a separate video on its YouTube channel.