Kocourek joined Victoria’s Secret in March of last year after three years as chief merchandising officer at Kendra Scott. Her CV also includes EVP at Kohl’s, 12 years at Gap, and executive roles across brands like Hot Topic and American Eagle. 

Kocourek joined VS ahead of last year’s show, and immediately began building a plan to leverage the event for beauty and fragrance sales in 2026.

“A big part of my job is finding those moments where beauty can integrate with the brand and the storytelling,” she said. “When we can do that, and tell that beautiful story together with intimates, it’s real gold for us.”

Victoria’s Secret’s core customer is 25-45 years old, with the Pink line bringing in 18- to 24-year-olds. Kocourek told Glossy that around half of its shoppers purchase beauty SKUs alongside apparel and intimates, which gives the company a long runway for growth. 

Victoria’s Secret is known for its fragrance business, which includes value-focused body mists and fine fragrance, including the top-selling fragrance in the U.S., according to the company, called Bombshell. “But you can’t see scent, so we knew we needed to develop some products [for the runway show] that could make her feel like she can look like an angel and be a part of that world,” Kocourek said. 

Kocourek’s team tapped into VS fan groups on its app, plus Reddit and Facebook, as well as ongoing conversations and show commentary happening on TikTok and Instagram, to develop a road map for what consumers want from the brand in 2026. 

“The seed of the idea really came from social listening,” Kocourek said. “There’s so much fandom for this brand — it’s the most loved brand that I have ever experienced — and then we have these deep, rich archives [of discontinued products] with rabid fandom around them.” 

Similar to the nostalgia sweeping food, beverage and beauty right now, many fans of the brand yearn for the unapologetically sexy aesthetic, including big, bouncy hair and shimmery skin, that made the brand famous in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile, the team saw white space to expand its offerings to include hair care, eye patches and a large-scale expansion of its top fragrances into body care. 

This led to the brand’s first-ever beauty partnership with eye-patch maker Patchology. “Eye patches are not our core competency,” Kocourek said. “We wanted them to be really good and [come from a brand with] credibility.” The team used it as a branding opportunity: The patches, sold through VS and Patchology, feature VS’s iconic pink-and-white stripes and an angel-wing design. 

Outside of NPD, Kocourek also resurrected a heritage product, called Diva Dust, through a reformulation and TikTok relaunch. Both the patches and the Diva Dust, which is a shimmery formula used on body and face, have sold out ahead of Sunday’s show. The Bombshell Shine collection also includes a dewy body luminizer, shimmery perfume, high-shine lip gloss and hair spray that leaves a fine mist of glitter through hair. 

Kocourek welcomes the sold-out status. “I’m always of the mind of ‘sell out and celebrate,’ and then you can chase,” she said. “It’s so much more fun to chase than it is to try to figure out what you’re going to do with a bunch of things [that didn’t sell]. Plus it builds up the demand.” 

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show launched in 1995 and was first broadcast on television in 2001. The company took a hiatus from 2019 to 2022 and reintroduced the show in 2023. This year’s event will be broadcast on YouTube and will feature musical acts Megan Thee Stallion, KATSEYE, Tate McRae and Megan Moroney, plus supermodels like Adriana Lima, Gigi Hadid and Candice Swanepoel. 

Victoria’s Secret reported a net sales increase of 10% to reach $1.611 billion during its Q2 ending on August 1. The company operates 1,430 stores across 70 countries.

Expanding beauty’s presence at Sunday’s show is just one awareness lever the brand uses today. The company launched a YouTube docuseries called “Angels Among Us” in early October that follows a group of runway hopefuls as they compete to be the newest Victoria’s Secret Angel. The show’s winner will be unveiled during Sunday’s runway show. Kocourek and her team leveraged the third episode of the web series to debut the new range of beauty products through a glimpse into the campaign photoshoot. 

The show was produced in partnership with Boardwalk Pictures, the team behind “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” and directed by Nadia Hallgren, director of docs like “Victoria Beckham” and “Pop Star Academy: Katseye.” 

“I would expect that, coming out of the show, there’s going to be an even bigger build [in excitement and anticipation for beauty],” Kocourek said. “We have some special items that we’ll bring in for holiday, and then, as we look forward, we have lots of newness coming, which is also a great opportunity for us to test into new categories like hair.”