Phoenix 24
She didn’t just walk the runway—she rewrote who it belongs to.
New York City, October 2025.
For the first time in the history of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, a Latina artist both performed and walked the runway. Karol G, the Colombian powerhouse who has turned reggaetón into a global language, transformed the event into a celebration of identity and self-definition that reached far beyond fashion.
The show’s return after years of rebranding was intended to restore relevance to a legacy often accused of aesthetic uniformity. Karol G’s entrance changed the script. Wearing a deep-crimson bodysuit with sculpted wings inspired by pre-Columbian symbolism, she opened her performance with a bilingual medley before stepping directly onto the catwalk—an act equal parts spectacle and statement.
Observers inside the Manhattan venue described the energy as electric. Industry veterans noted that the brand, once criticized for exclusivity, was staging its most radical experiment: merging mainstream glamour with cultural authenticity. For Karol G, it was not merely about music. “This moment is not just for me,” she told the audience. “It’s for every girl who was told her accent was too loud or her rhythm too bold.”
According to executives from the fashion conglomerate’s New York headquarters, the collaboration was months in the making and strategically aligned with the company’s diversity initiative launched earlier this year. Analysts at the London-based Centre for Creative Economy said the partnership underscores how Latin influence has become “a central narrative of global pop culture, not a peripheral one.”
From Los Angeles, Billboard described the night as a “turning point for representation in commercial entertainment,” while cultural commentators in Bogotá framed it as the culmination of Latin America’s long-delayed recognition within Western luxury. In Paris, fashion editor Amélie Durand remarked that the choreography “felt more like a coronation than a concert.”
Behind the runway’s glitter, the business dimension was evident. For Victoria’s Secret, aligning with a Latin icon revitalizes a brand struggling to stay relevant among younger audiences. For Karol G, the move reinforces her evolution from music star to transnational symbol—an artist able to occupy spaces once reserved for a narrow idea of femininity. Marketing specialists from the Wharton School observed that such collaborations are “the new diplomacy of image and rhythm,” where identity becomes currency and visibility translates into power.
Outside the venue, fans wrapped in Colombian flags waited long after the lights dimmed, chanting her name as photographers spilled into the street. Inside, the stage lights faded to red and gold, leaving the imprint of a performance that fused fashion, language, and pride into a single visual crescendo.
By morning, the images had circled the globe. What remained was more than a viral moment—it was a cultural signature stamped on a runway that once excluded the world it now needs to survive.
Phoenix24: the truth is structure, not noise. / Phoenix24: la verdad es estructura, no ruido.