If you were also a teenager in the peak Victoria’s Secret era, I have no doubt that you’ll remember the 2012 VS Fashion Show very, very vividly.
To refresh your memory, the “Angels” on the runway in 2012 included Adriana Lima, Miranda Kerr, Candice Swanepoel, Doutzen Kroes, and Behati Prinsloo. And the performers that year were — wait for it — Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Bruno Mars, which, frankly, sounds like a festival lineup I’d pay millions of dollars to attend in 2026.
But despite all the star power, one of the most memorable moments from the 2012 show remains the VS runway debut of a 20-year-old British model with bushy eyebrows, Cara Delevingne.
For context, Cara was already gaining significant prominence as a model at the time, but I think most would agree that her walk during Justin Bieber’s performance of “Beauty and a Beat” at the 2012 VS Fashion Show shot her into another stratosphere of online fame.
This specific photo was IMPOSSIBLE to escape on Tumblr in 2012/2013, I can tell you that.
And though it may have seemed picture perfect from the outside, it turns out that Cara’s breakout moment came at a pretty complicated time in her life.
During this week’s episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper showed Cara one of the iconic photos from her VS debut and asked her to share some insight into that era. Immediately, Cara became shy and uncomfortable. “That feels fun; it felt like dress-up,” she said. “But then there was something darker about it.”
“Those shows, I was not sober. In the sense that like, I don’t wanna speak for the rest of the girls, but it wasn’t a nice environment, personally,” Cara explained. “It definitely changed how feminine I seem or come off because of modeling. Growing up, I had short hair. I didn’t like wearing girls’ clothes, like I really didn’t like being a girl… So I think for modeling, I really had to become this girl that I wasn’t.”
Cara, who now describes herself as a “proud lesbian,” also said that she was closeted in 2012 and felt like an “undercover lesbian.” “I was gay and also [thinking], ‘Am I the only lesbian that’s ever done fucking Victoria’s Secret?’” she said. “I was having a great time, but also very confused.”
Discussing her relationship with drugs and alcohol in 2012, Cara, who is now sober, said she wasn’t nervous to walk the VS runway because she was under the influence of substances. Recalling the “horrible” time, she said: “I woke up, probably had a couple shots of whiskey and a Xanax to get me down that runway.”
She continued: “Everyone else [had] very womanly bodies…and I have no ass. At that point, I was like, I am not a Victoria’s Secret Angel, I’m a devil. I am not part of this! I remember when they asked me to be one. I was like, ‘I don’t think I belong here.’”
Cara walked the VS Fashion Show in 2013, too. She was invited back to walk in 2016, but turned it down.
