First-ever Victoria’s Secret Angel Karen Mulder shares how she got her wings
Karen Mulder is the original Victoria’s Secret Angel.
In 1998, the Dutch supermodel became the first woman to wear the lingerie company’s now-signature wings down the runway — and as she told Dylan Kelly in a recent interview, the entire concept was her idea.
“I was thinking of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and then I told [former VS marketing chief] Ed Razek, ‘Why don’t you do Victoria’s Secret Angels?’ Then they did.”
“I think that might BE Victoria’s Secret,” Kelly joked.
Mulder, now 57, was in her late 20s when she opened the show in her white feathered wings; fellow Angel Tyra Banks sported a set during the same show, too.
Mulder was back at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show this year, though she sat in the front row instead of strutting her stuff on the runway.
Over the course of her career thus far, the so-called “Blonde with Class” has appeared on the cover of more than 700 magazines, including 22 issues of Vogue; she remains the only model to ever cover two consecutive months of American Vogue.
She’s back at it now, fronting Vogue Germany’s September 2026 issue 31 years after her last Vogue cover.
In the accompanying interview, Mulder discussed how she was “cancelled” in the early 2000s after speaking out against abuse in the fashion industry, which led to her stepping out of the spotlight for several decades.
“I’m not the same person I used to be,” she told the publication, adding, “I’m looking to the future with nothing but positivity.”