In 2009, he transitioned into filmmaking, releasing a documentary called “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” based on a Vanity Fair story he wrote about the baroque and extravagant world of the Italian designer. “I never wanted to be of it, but I felt it was really important, because it’s what made the world go round,” he said. (“At Vanity Fair, it was part of the job description,” he said with a laugh.) Tyrnauer became a kind of participant-observer: although he kept the subjects he wrote about at arm’s length, he was fascinated by the place they inhabited in society. Most of his reporting, Tyrnauer said, focussed on the “evil and glamour of evil” that typified the lives of the rich and powerful. Tyrnauer grew up in L.A., and, after attending college at Wesleyan, moved to New York, where, in the early nineteen-nineties, he began to write for the Condé Nast magazine Vanity Fair under the editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. “Fantasy is more real than reality to Americans, generation after generation,” Tyrnauer told me, when I met him recently in Los Angeles. But beyond the exploration of Wexner’s Epstein links and the real-life fissures in the fantasy world Victoria’s Secret built-the sexual-harassment claims, the pernicious body-image messaging, the lack of diverse representation-Tyrnauer’s documentary is especially worth watching for the light it shines on the dreams the company sold, which were powerful enough to shape our collective imagination of what a woman can and should be.
VICTORIA SECRET SERIES
The series examines the often unpretty behind-the-scenes story of Victoria’s Secret, which, in the hands of its parent company’s C.E.O., Leslie Wexner-an enigmatic billionaire with close ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein-grew from a modest business in the early nineteen-eighties to a mammoth corporation, and one of the most prominent mall brands of the turn of the millennium, before seeing its fortunes fall in the sociocultural reckoning of the past half decade. This is one question that “Angels and Demons,” directed by Matt Tyrnauer, is interested in answering.
VICTORIA SECRET HOW TO
We know how to act when the camera is on,” Tyra Banks, the supermodel and onetime Victoria’s Secret Angel, explains brightly in an archival interview, later in the documentary. And yet the scene also captures the instances in which this dizzying illusion momentarily breaks: Kendall Jenner rolling her eyes after being asked to pose for what is surely the umpteenth half-naked iPhone portrait Bella Hadid’s face growing slack once a photographer is done capturing her the too-snug panties riding awkwardly up the posteriors of two models as they pose on a table, like a pair of Ferraris on a car show’s platform. With their cascading curls and sculpted cheekbones, their bodies clad in skimpy underthings, these so-called Angels-the company’s name for its brand ambassadors-embody a fantasy world in shades of pink and white and tan. There are only a few minutes left before the lingerie company’s annual fashion show is slated to begin, and, as scads of photographers mill about, the supermodels set to walk the runway grin and pout for the cameras. The new three-part documentary series “Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons,” on Hulu, opens with a backstage scene.
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