Behind the Glitz : The Struggle of Bodies, Jewels and Lives in the Marketplace of Glamour

Hollywood and the world of glamour have long followed an old tradition: turning everything into an illusion, a spell that makes people forget reality and gravitate towards glitter alone. When the curtains rose on the 2026 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles, the “City of Angels,” on Sunday night, it was not merely a gathering of models and costumes. It was a grand spectacle of modern capitalism, the female body and the market’s insatiable appetite for display.

When celebrated supermodels such as Gigi Hadid and Candice Swanepoel stepped onto the runway, the thunderous applause concealed much more than it revealed. But a perspective that looks closely at cinema and society always tries to discover the human stories hidden beneath this ocean of light.

A Garment Without a Thread and a $50 Million Sculpted Stone
The biggest attraction of the spectacle was the Fantasy Bra, which returned to the runway for the first time since 2018. The renowned jewellery house Jacob & Co. crafted it through the combined efforts of 15 artisans, who devoted more than 1,000 hours to its creation. Its estimated price was $50 million—more than ₹415 crore.

The astonishing part was that this creation contained not a single thread of fabric. Instead, it was adorned with 4,410 diamonds weighing a total of 1,373 carats, with a rare 75.54-carat Fancy Vivid Yellow diamond suspended at its very centre. Wearing this extraordinary creation was 29-year-old Kylie Jenner, making her debut on this runway.

The scene reminded me of those extravagant cinematic sets where the stones a person wears become more valuable than the person herself. At a time when basic necessities remain beyond the reach of large sections of the world, a body covered in diamonds, without a garment of fabric, is presented as the pinnacle of art and fashion. This is the same illusion woven by the marketplace: it digs a terrifying chasm between deprivation and excess, then drapes that divide with a glittering curtain of light.
Professionalism Over the Exhaustion of Motherhood : Barbara Returns to the Runway After Six Weeks
Yet, amid this artificial radiance, another episode revealed the resilience of a woman, the tenacity of her existence and the harsh realities of today’s work culture. Thirty-three-year-old supermodel Barbara Palvin had given birth to her first son just six weeks earlier. Barely 42 days after embracing motherhood with her husband, Dylan Sprouse, she stepped onto the same runway in high heels, her fists clenched.

When asked backstage about the experience, she described it as “empowering” and offered a deeply unsettling observation: “In America, most working women have to return to work after six weeks anyway.”

These words are not merely the experience of a model. They are a sharp indictment of a ruthless corporate system in which even the tenderness of motherhood is denied sufficient time to rest and recover. Last year, Palvin had also walked in heels just four weeks after fracturing her leg.

One may call this an artist’s dedication, the compulsion to keep smiling before the cameras, or simply a rule of the glamour industry: the slogan “The show must go on” weighs more heavily than human bones and emotions.

The fashion caravan passed through Los Angeles and eventually came to an end. The photographs will show only glittering diamonds, smiling faces and angels adorned with wings. But a glimpse behind the curtain reveals that this city of glamour, so enchanting on the outside, can be equally ruthless and commercial within. It is a world where people seem condemned to conceal their pain behind a smile, lest the marketplace of ticket sales and advertising ever grow cold.

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Syad Habib

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