In the latest issue of Marie Claire, Bella Hadid dishes on the real reason she finally agreed to return to work with Victoria’s Secret, after a very public separation years ago centering around a report in the New York Times alleging a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment at the lingerie company.
“It has been a few years since I’ve done anything with Victoria’s Secret,” Hadid told Marie Claire. “What magnetized me to coming back was them coming to me and really proving to me that, behind the scenes, Victoria’s Secret has changed so drastically…. There was a type of way that, I think, a lot of us women who used to work with Victoria’s Secret felt. And now, six of the seven board members are all female.”
It wasn’t smooth-sailing, convincing Hadid, one of the top celebrity models working today, to come back into the fold.
“It took me almost a year and a half to take the meeting with them,” she said. “Even having that conversation was very complicated for me because of the way that I had felt in the past.”
Hadid is also prepared to weather a potential storm of criticism—especially on social media—about her return to a brand that had previously been so mired in controversy.
“I think people are going to have things to say regardless,” she said. “But 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. 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.”
