Barbara Palvin
Barbara Palvin, the Hungarian model scouted in Budapest at 13, on L'Oreal Paris, Victoria's Secret, her marriage to Dylan Sprouse and her 2026 runway return.
Photo: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and converted to WebP.
Six Weeks After Labor Day, a Runway in Los Angeles
On Sunday, October 18, 2026, Barbara Palvin walked in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Los Angeles. She had given birth to her first child, a daughter, on Labor Day, about six weeks earlier.
She told Good Morning America how she managed it. "I'm happy to be here because of the help I got and the support I got, but you know, I'm still healing," she said. Reaction online was split.
Today pointed out that she had done something similar a year before. At the 2025 show she walked four weeks after breaking her foot.
A Street Near Home in Budapest
Palvin was born in Budapest and grew up there. In a 2010 question-and-answer with W magazine, when she was 16, she described "an average family in Budapest" and frequent trips to a small village in the countryside, where her grandmother and great-grandmother lived.
She was 13 when she was spotted. She was out walking with her mother near their home when a scout named Balazs stopped them, asked her to come to the agency's office, and took test photos. By 2010 he was her manager at Icon Model Management. Sports Illustrated told the same story six years later: a girl from Hungary, discovered on a Budapest street at 13.
Modeling did not replace school. At 16 she told W she was still a student, fitting jobs around lessons, with exams due at the end of the year.
Rouge Caresse for L'Oreal Paris
On February 2, 2012, WWD reported that L'Oreal Paris had named Palvin, an 18-year-old from Budapest, as an ambassador. She would be the face of the Rouge Caresse lipstick, with ads running worldwide from that month.
The tie lasted. When Sports Illustrated introduced her in early 2016, it still listed her as an ambassador for L'Oreal Paris.
The 2016 Sports Illustrated Rookie Class
Sports Illustrated named Palvin one of the rookies of its 2016 Swimsuit issue and revealed her, in a shoot by James Macari, before the issue came out in February. The same SI profile says she made her acting debut in the 2014 film Hercules.
From a PINK Shoot to Victoria's Secret Wings
Palvin traced her link to Victoria's Secret back to her early teens. "When I was 13, I saw the VS Fashion Show and said, 'One day I will get there,'" she told People, in remarks Hola carried in 2019. Three or four years after that, she said, she shot for the brand's PINK line for the first time.
According to Hola, she walked the Victoria's Secret show in 2012 and again in 2018, and in 2019 the brand named her one of its Angels. Hola reported that she was the first Hungarian model to join that group.
Longines and the Conquest Campaign
In June 2024 Vogue Scandinavia reported that Longines had named Palvin its ambassador of elegance. The campaign marked the 70th anniversary of the Conquest watch and was shot in Budapest, her hometown.
In the same interview she said her first pay-check went on a watch. "I wanted to treat myself, and since my dad is a huge watch lover, I thought I'd get something special," she said. She picked a big, chunky one, like the watch her father wore at the time.
The Church in Albertirsa
Palvin met the actor Dylan Sprouse at an event around 2017 or 2018. She cut in front of him in line, and when he objected she asked whether he was a hot-dog vendor. Vogue reported that by January 2019 the two were living together in New York, and that they got engaged in September 2022 on a camping trip with friends in California.
They married on July 15, 2023, in Hungary. The church ceremony took place in Albertirsa, in the same church where Palvin's parents had married 34 years earlier. A civil ceremony followed on her parents' property, Harlekin Birtok, which doubles as an event venue. Her sister, Anita, helped plan the wedding.
"[This past weekend] was supposed to be an intimate event," Palvin told Vogue. "But we ended up having 115 guests because there are a lot of people we care about."
A Daughter Born on Labor Day 2026
A representative for Palvin confirmed to ABC News in May 2026 that the couple were expecting. On September 28 they announced the birth of their first child, a daughter, in a joint Instagram post. "We took Labor Day literally this year," Palvin wrote under a photo of the couple in Dodgers jerseys. Twenty days later she walked the Victoria's Secret runway.
Sources
- This Week's Model: Barbara Palvin
- Barbara Palvin - Model | FMDB
- L'Oreal Paris Taps Barbara Palvin
- SI Swimsuit 2016 Rookie Reveal: Barbara Palvin
- Barbara Palvin is Victoria's Secret newest angel
- Barbara Palvin Wore Vivienne Westwood to Marry Dylan Sprouse at Their Hungarian-Countryside Wedding
- Barbara Palvin on Longines, Dylan Sprouse's wedding tie, and Scandinavian style - Vogue Scandinavia
- Dylan Sprouse and Barbara Palvin welcome their 1st baby together - Good Morning America
- Barbara Palvin opens up about walking Victoria's Secret runway 6 weeks postpartum - Good Morning America
- Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2026: Full List of Models and Performers
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