Romee Strijd was a Victoria's Secret "Angel", and now she didn't make it through casting: "You were great, but they thought you wouldn't fit in"

In 2018 she wore the Swarovski look, which only one "Angel" gets each year - wings with more than 125,000 crystals and over 250 hours of handwork. Eight years later, Romee Strijd failed to make it through casting for the Victoria's Secret show, scheduled for October 18 in Los Angeles. She broke the news in tears on her TikTok channel.

She isn't only upset about the rejection, but about the way it was handled. Weeks went by without any response from the organisers, which, she says, left her mentally exhausted. She believes the decision had been made long before her agent told her, and that the whole process was a mess. The message that finally came through her agent read: "You were great, but they thought you wouldn't fit into the show this year."

Strijd says she won't be going to castings for the show any more and wants to keep her good memories of the brand. An industry that sells women a dream and communicates with its "Angels" through silence - how many times have we seen the same picture in far less glamorous offices?

Her path started early. She was discovered at 13 in Amsterdam; two years later she was working with DNA Model Agency and walking runways for Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Stress and loneliness drove her to step back from fashion and focus on school. She came back at 18 and, after more than four months of preparation, signed with Victoria's Secret in 2014. After her show debut, in 2015, at the age of 19, she became an "Angel".

In New York she settled in with support from fellow models Sara Sampaio and Elsa Hosk, and in 2016 she signed with IMG Models. By her side the whole time was Laurens van Leeuwen, her high school boyfriend, with whom she has been together since 2010. For a long time they lived apart, until he moved to New York to be with her. They later got engaged.

Behind the glamour, things were harder. In 2020 she announced her first pregnancy, after years of struggling with polycystic ovary syndrome, which meant she had no period for seven years. In 2022 the second came - "soon we'll be a family of four" - after which she stepped away from fashion to focus on her children and a healthy lifestyle. In 2023 she returned to the runway, as the bride at Fovari's haute couture show in Paris.

The October 18 show will go ahead without her. The brand that made her famous is clearly looking for new faces - the question is whether it knows how to see the old ones out.