Steven Galloway, Victoria's Secret‘s creative movement director, planted himself at the end of a practice runway and called out to a nervous contestant whose legs were visibly shaking: ‘I need an entrance. I need an entrance.’ The stakes behind that single instruction are real. Ten women have roughly two and a half months to become runway-ready for one of fashion’s most watched shows, and the people deciding their fate are watching every stride, every shoulder roll, every moment of hesitation. What unfolds across these sessions is not a modeling masterclass so much as a crash course in becoming someone else entirely under enormous pressure, guided by people who genuinely want them to get there.
Two kinds of walk, one very short window
Galloway distinguished early between what he called a catwalk and a horse walk. The catwalk, he explained, carries a glide-and-stride quality, as though the model is moving across water. The horse walk is a deliberate stomp, face smoldering. Victoria's Secret, he made clear, sits closer to the flirty and powerful end of that spectrum, with a little extra physicality compared to a high-fashion runway, because the women are wearing lingerie. For contestants who had never practiced a pivot or a planted turn, the gap between knowing those definitions and executing them in heels, in front of casting directors, felt enormous.
One contestant’s feet turned purple inside her heels during the session. She did not ask to swap shoes. ‘Models can’t be like, oh, can we get another shoe?’ she said afterward, still fighting through the pain. ‘Everyone’s having to face the same troubles. I just wanted to get it right.’ Another spent the evening in the hallway with two friends, Riley and Belle, running pivots together at their own initiative. The technique one of them passed along was specific: shift your weight onto your right leg, keep the planted foot grounded, and make sure your face is the absolute last thing anyone sees before you leave the frame.
The photo shoot and the deliberation that followed
The next day brought two simultaneous shoots: a holiday set directed by Galloway and a glitter-heavy Bombshell Shine launch directed by Bramble Triumpho. Triumpho singled out one contestant who responded to every direction with a single word, ‘heard,’ and then executed immediately. ‘She’s the only one having fun,’ Triumpho said. ‘You can see it in every photo. That’s what will win the show.’
One contestant, originally from Cameroon, described what the opportunity means beyond herself. Her grandmother used to wonder whether Victoria’s Secret made her size. Her mother would carry luggage full of the brand’s products back to Cameroon to share with family, proof that the brand included them. ‘I’m an angel, too,’ she said quietly. ‘This means more to me, not just for me, but to show my family that we are also meant to be a part of this.’
That evening, casting director Pier Giorgio flew in from Italy specifically to watch the women walk one by one in a true casting format. The private deliberation that followed was blunt. One contestant’s walk was described as unlikely to change. Another’s photos were strong but her runway form was not. A third was cut after the judges concluded, in Adam’s words, that her photos and her walk both needed work. She hugged him, thanked him for the opportunity, and walked back to the group, where the other nine women gathered around her.
The girl who packed her own shoes
Belle, the contestant who was eliminated, had arrived telling anyone who would listen that today finally felt real, that the glitter and the lights made it sink in. She received her news graciously and left the room with her shoulders back.
Back in the hallway, Riley, the contestant Adam had told to stay and keep working on her walk, was swinging her arms in wide panther-style arcs, exactly as Galloway had drilled her, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. The runway that felt like the biggest stage in the world an hour earlier now felt, at least for one moment, like something she might actually belong on.
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