Victoria's Secret will always find an audience. But how many members of the normal-sized buying public will be among it?

Does being a celebrity come with a loyalty card? Like the ones you get from the coffee shop with the promise of a free latte after you've punched every hole?

So, for the rich and beautiful to achieve immutable celebrity status they have to tick off the one marked "Vegas Heavyweight Championship Bout" and schlep to that strange city in the desert to watch a sport they otherwise couldn't even describe. Then they have to punch the one marked "Compromising weekend at Diddy's" and have a really great time while resolutely ignoring the underage and unconscious and all those bottles of baby oil.

But most importantly, there's the one on the card called "Victoria's Secret Last Chance Attempt at Rehabilitation and Relevance Catwalk Show". And for that one, they have to pretend that a show featuring the thinnest, most objectified, most sexualised women on the planet is somehow reshaping feminism and female power in the form of angel's wings and buttfloss, and that their mere high-profile presence in the midst of this Busby Berkeley kitschery strikes a blow for body positivity around the world.

And then they can get a free coffee.

After the former marketing manager of Victoria's Secret blew up the brand with his offensive comments about trans and plus-sized models — saying their inclusion would ruin "the fantasy" — and after rising criticism of the label's hyper-sexuality and obsession with startlingly thin models, the runway show went into mothballs in 2019.

This week's return was an attempted do-over by the lingerie label, with a few older and normal-sized models in the line-up, along with the superstars who made the television event one of the most watched in its time.

So, there they all were, as the celebrities have ever been over the chequered years of the biggest underwear show in town, turning up and turning out: ultra-famous people like… Teyana Taylor? Ummm… Ice Spice?

Hang on — where was everybody?

In the end, it was a spectacularly failed reboot

Maybe Diddy did it.

Maybe, finally, some of the high and mighty have finally read the room and figured out that the accumulated horror shows they've partied at over the decades — the nights in Heff's pool, the days on Harvey's yacht, the weekends at Jeffrey's — have exhausted the public's goodwill, and that discretion IS the better part of valour. Maybe they stayed home with Netflix and a glass of red and prayed that the gods of tabloid vengeance and fan backlash pass by their door.

Mind you, the models didn't seem to get the same message. And that's where the real glitterati were: Kate Moss, Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid, Alessandria Ambrosio.

Even Tyra Banks was there, strutting a body shape that would have seen her howling herself out of the Next Top Model competition she hosted back in the day — a hypocrisy the internet gleefully seized on.

Why were they there? Why do mature, successful models still feel they need to show for this peepshow? For a parade long derided as soft-porn titillation that compounded self-loathing of women everywhere with its staggering and impossible body standards?

I guess there are some jobs that nobody can afford to turn down.

In the end, it was a spectacularly failed reboot, because the one issue that this ultra-successful brand was trying to fix — diversity — was made even more obvious by its attempts at inclusion. Let me explain.

When your runway boasts one or two models who have stomachs, thighs and butts that look like the rest of us, that doesn't mean we suddenly feel seen: it feels more like being lost on a page in Where's Wally, standing out for all the wrong reasons among a mob of Amazons, hiding in plain sight as the weirdo, as the "other".

It gave new meaning to the term "token", as the ratio of real-to-fantasy remained stubbornly stuck at a BMI level of 16 or less, the WHO's standard for "severely thin".

The show's perv factor is a tough sell today

It was gaslighting of the worst kind: we put a few of you lumpy normals on the runway and we even gave you some of our precious wings — so shut up.

There is almost nothing about this show that is in tune with its time (except, of course, for the universal persistence of porn). Ask any woman of any age, and this highly coloured, highly synthetic, highly scratchy underwear ain't what we're wearing: not in the era of bamboo yoga pants and athleisure-wear.

The deification of the ultra-skinny model has also, mercifully, been muted and gone underground: while most in fashion still worship in secret at the altar of heroin-chic, at least they have the good sense to keep it a silent cult. Even Anna Wintour knows that.

And the show's perv factor — a display so revealing that one longtime fashion writer who was reluctantly sent to cover the show reported in horror that, when a model bent over in a thong, "I saw it all" — is a tough sell to the Gen Z, post-#MeToo world.

But that's the one thing that perhaps won't change. In a fashion industry built for female aspiration and the male gaze, gorgeous women in very little clothing will always find an audience. I'm just not sure how many members of the normal-sized buying public will be among it.

This weekend, Annabel Crabb shakes her head at the prime minister's real estate missteps and Hamish Blake tells me about his guilty pleasure — a Sisyphean task that eventually falls to all of us. Don't forget all my You Don't Know Me podcasts can be found here.

Have a safe and happy weekend and here's to the algorithm! Sometimes (sometimes) it gets it just right, when my local gym's "chill mix" tossed up this glorious collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Tash Sultana and singer-songwriter Matt Corby from the same year Victoria's Secret was cancelled, it seemed like the universe making everything right. It's such a beautiful track — enjoy it.

And go well.

Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.