Miranda Kerr turned down Victoria’s Secret return over anxiety at 43
The Australian model said she seriously considered walking the 2026 show for the first time in 14 years, but ultimately trusted her instinct to sit it out.
Miranda Kerr said she seriously considered returning to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for the first time in 14 years, but decided against it after meditating on the anxiety the prospect stirred in her. The show took place on October 18 in Los Angeles, 20 years after Kerr first walked its runway.
Speaking on the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast on November 3, Kerr explained that while friends and business associates encouraged her to accept the invitation, something felt wrong. She recalled getting “excited” thinking of the fun memories and the playfulness of returning, but as she contemplated the reality. “The only way I could resolve it was to say ‘OK, you’re not going to do the show. How do you feel now?’ and I felt the knot in my stomach release,” Us Weekly reports.
Kerr identified the source of her discomfort as rooted in her current life: she is 43, a mother of four, and the lingerie show would require her to appear in underwear alongside other models. She said she knew it was the right decision for her once the physical anxiety lifted.
A different life stage
The model noted that her life has moved into a new phase since her last appearance for Victoria’s Secret in 2012. She shares four sons: Flynn, 15, with her ex-husband Orlando Bloom; and Hart, 8, Myles, 7, and Pierre, 2, with her current husband Evan Spiegel, whom she married in 2017. She is also focused on her Kora Organics skincare line.
“It also feels like that was then and this is now, and I’m at a different stage in my life,” she told the podcast host. When asked if she no longer felt connected to that image of herself, Kerr neither fully agreed nor disagreed. “Maybe. I’m at a different stage of my life. But I love all of those fun pictures,” she said, according to Us Weekly.
Honor of the ask
Despite her decision, Kerr said she felt “very humbled and honored” to have been invited back. “What an honor to be asked to walk back as a 43-year-old mother of four, like I feel very humbled and honored that they would even want me,” she told Page Six. She spoke positively of her time with the brand, describing “beautiful memories” from her six appearances over the years starting in 2006.
Kerr made her reasoning public before the show via Instagram on October 17, posting a series of throwback photographs from her Victoria’s Secret runway appearances. She wrote that it had been 20 years since her first show, and that she felt grateful for the friendships and memories that chapter of her life had brought. “It meant so much to be invited to return this year, especially as it marks 20 years since my first show, but I ultimately felt in my heart it was right to cherish this chapter as it was,” she wrote in the post, according to Us Weekly.
The brand responded supportively to her decision in the comments. “Always an Angel to us,” Victoria’s Secret wrote.
Fresh runway experience
Kerr’s anxiety about the Victoria’s Secret show contrasted with her comfort at a runway return one month earlier. In September, she made a surprise appearance walking for Stella McCartney after nearly a decade away from the runway. She told the podcast that after the Stella McCartney show she had felt “really in alignment” with where she was in her life, and that the experience had felt elegant. That sense of ease stood in sharp contrast to the anxiety the Victoria’s Secret invitation stirred.
This article was compiled by the Glamorade editorial desk from the official announcements and reporting listed under Sources.
