2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Girl

The first fashion show extravaganza, introduced by Stephanie Seymour, was held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in August 1995. The show also featured Beverly Peele and Frederique van der Wal. This first fashion show occurred two months before The Limited, parent company of Victoria's Secret owner Intimate Brands, sold an initial public offering of a 16 percent stake in the company and almost had Seymour make an appearance at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for the opening bell. She actually did ring the closing bell at the NYSE as part of the publicity campaign. The subsequent three annual shows were also held at the Plaza.
In 1999, during Super Bowl XXXIII, Victoria's Secret announced a 72-hour countdown to the Internet webcast of the Victoria's Secret fashion show, which resulted in over 2 million internet viewers of the show. Parent company Intimate Brands bought a $1.5 million ($2 million today) 30-second television advertisement during the Super Bowl broadcast and spent an additional $4 million ($5.3 million) for subsequent international newspaper advertisements to publicize the event. The show, which was aired by Broadcast.com, featured Tyra Banks, Laetitia Casta, Heidi Klum, Karen Mulder, Daniela Pestova, Inés Rivero, and Seymour. In 1999 and 2000, the show was broadcast live on the internet, but the 2000 show was moved for a year from the usual February event at the Plaza to a May event in concert with the Cannes Film Festival in France to raise money for the Cinema Against AIDS charity; it raised $3.5 million.
In 2001, the show, which was hosted by Rupert Everett, returned to the New York City but at Bryant Park instead of the Plaza. That year, the show made its broadcast debut on ABC, drawing millions of viewers as well as some middle-brow controversy; the Federal Communications Commission received many complaints about the broadcast every year. The show has continued to be broadcast on network television every year since.
From 2002 through 2005, it was held at the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York City. The 2004 show was canceled due to a widespread crackdown on perceived indecency in broadcasting stemming from the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, in which Jackson encountered a breast-revealing "wardrobe malfunction". Before the 2005 show, Banks announced her retirement from modeling and embarkation on a television career with The Tyra Banks Show, making the 2005 show a farewell to her decade of fashion shows for the company.