Victoria Beckham (Q3632)
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Victoria Beckham is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Victoria Beckham |
Victoria Beckham is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2006
creative director
The crispness and conciseness of Victoria Beckham’s pre-fall imagery speaks for itself, but her clothes are even better viewed on a rack than in pictures. Fashion in mid-season collections can often feel like designing-by-rote, blanded-down fillers between more important runway statements. Something for a brand to just get through. That’s not the VB way. As a woman entrepreneur with her name over the door—and on her booming beauty products—every bit of what she does is personal.“I love working on pre-collections, because I love the fact that everything is very wearable, but with a strong fashion message as well,” she began as she was leafing through rails of tailoring, shirting, dresses, coats, and knitwear in her office in Hammersmith, west London. She said she’d watched the series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans and was inspired by the precision of 1940s and ’50s American society dressing—you can perhaps see the echo most directly in the knitted ski-like hoods (Little Edie-like?) and the slightly deconstructed evening and cocktail dresses she’s been selling successfully for seasons.But life is hardly one long party, especially now. What VB is achieving these days is a whole wardrobe, with the confident, easy-seeming everyday glamour that most women aim to exude on a daily basis, but which only comes about from a fanatical amount of work, follow-through, and detailed, practical insight and empathy on the part of a designer.This, in a time when the luxury industry is struggling to persuade women that fashion is worth it, is putting Victoria Beckham—who also strives to achieve non-insane pricing—is putting her ahead. “I’m really proud of that. You know, we do a lot of research into our fabrics to make sure that we can create beautiful garments that are considered well executed, but at the right price,” she said. “I think about all those years ago, you know, when I was doing presentations in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, it was all about silhouette, and that has just evolved. It’s still the obsession with silhouette. I think that we’ve really taken our time and done things at a pace, and I’ve not gone into new categories until I had the knowledge and can execute things in the right way.”We’ll be seeing the reality of the VB work process in a whole lot more detail next year, of course. Her Netflix documentary comes out in 2025.
2 December 2024
By the time you read this, the vivid green draped dress that was cut like an embrace of curves and worn by Gigi Hadid to terrific effect in Victoria Beckham’s spring 2025 show will already be available to buy. It was made so immediately after the show ended. Heck, maybe you’ve already bought it! Immediacy has been part Beckham's arsenal as a designer. She understands what she wants to wear, and that has by extension been a very reliable barometer of what a ton of other women will want to wear too. Ever since she launched her label with her distinctive form-fitting dresses way back in 2008 she has taken the lead and seen plenty of others happily follow suit—or dress, for that matter.When it comes to spring, Hadid’s dress might have cleaved most closely to the origins of her label. But what’s been impressive about Beckham is that she doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet, or just let herself ever settle into the comfort groove. For spring, that intuition of hers was telling her to take more risks, push further, test the limits of what she can do—and very good it was too. This was, no pun intended, stretching what can be meant by body and conscious, and none of it typical or expected. “It’s all about silhouette and my obsession with silhouette,” she said of her spring collection at a preview the other day. “Each season we look at the brand codes, and how we can respect the brand codes, but challenge ourselves to explore new ways of expressing them.”Beckham indicated a table on which were some pieces in a gossamer light silk chiffon which had been dipped into a resin so it looked like they had been molded directly onto the body, sculpted close to the torso or floating skywards, before letting the fabric flutter off in the breeze. Each took several days to make. It was a technique which was ethereal and romantic, with the series of floating floral dresses emphasizing the delicacy of the fabric, but the molded fabric was also striking when used for a wet look top which had a bit of a tougher attitude. (And they weren’t just for show; Beckham mentioned they’d figured out a way to make something very similar available in the showroom.)
27 September 2024
“I’m really designing what I desire. A woman-to-woman collection,” Victoria Beckham remarked, as she whipped through how she came up with her resort offering. “As someone who wears a lot of tuxedos—black, white, or navy—it became a question of how do you change that up?” One idea, as she related in her speedy anecdote-peppered précis, came directly from revisiting a Jennifer Beals moment inFlashdance. “After my birthday, David and I were watching it at home. Of course I lovedFlashdancegrowing up, being dance-mad, but he’d never seen it. It was that moment when she takes off her man’s tuxedo jacket in a restaurant, and she’s wearing a sleeveless dress shirt under it.” A version of that shirt—a plastron halter—is worn under the last trouser suit in her lookbook, a secreted VB device for putting in a posh arrival appearance and partying later.Her incidental reference, there, to her recent 50th birthday bash (with that one-night Spice Girls reunion organized by her husband) builds into the picture of what’s turning out to be a year that holds a lot to celebrate for Victoria Beckham. Her brand, and her beauty enterprise, went into profit early in 2024, and then, hard on the heels of her birthday, she flew to Spain’s Costa Brava to launch her collaboration with Mango. In all, a lot of publicity around a style and lifestyle which is all about her, but also for Everywoman.“Resort is my favorite collection to work on, because I love how we have quite a large portion that’s about what you’re going to wear in the lead-up to Christmas.” Her calibrations of evening and occasion-dressing are borne from a lot of practical thinking-through. “It’s the ritual of getting dressed, mimicking what happens when you twist to look at yourself in the mirror,” she explained, pointing to the asymmetrically draped bi-color jersey slip dresses. “Or,” she added “there are hints of lingerie left in, from the early stages of getting dressed.”It comes across as a good, shoppable balance of tailoring and dresses, somehow 1930s with the bias dresses and masculine black tie tropes, yet embedded with her knack for dialing back over-formality. She pointed out, for example, how she’d casualized a tux silhouette by belting it with a mini B-Frame bag on a chain.Not all’s evening; the tiny skirt and oversized sweater looks are pure VB autobiographical mirroring: Posh ’90s via English schoolgirl uniform, brought crisply up to date.
The pragmatism, fun, and energy she’s putting into her work is paying off. A peek at her prices is also a good clue to why the brand is getting a healthy uplift; in a time when the cost of luxury fashion has skyrocketed, she’s kept her price-tags steadily reasonable by contrast.
28 May 2024
Poor Victoria Beckham has broken a metatarsal in a gym mishap at home—ironically a similar foot injury to the one that caused national UK drama when her husband David famously broke his in 2002, just before he was due to captain England in the World Cup. Although fashion fans have not yet been praying for her recovery in quite the way soccer fans did for David, the designer was not put off her A-game this season.“This time it really was about the silhouette,” she said in a preview, using one of her crutches to point out the ideas on her board. “We talk a lot about creating a wardrobe here,” she said. “And so this one was literally inspired by a physical wardrobe. Building up the shoulderline, suspending things.” Some of her jackets were hung from the front of the body, leaving the back naked. It seemed kind of in sync with the different-front-and-back looks seen at Prada this season, but equally seemed to be referencing the gesture every woman knows, of when you hold something up against yourself in the mirror to decide if it suits you.Anyway, this conceptual theme wasn’t overdone—and it didn’t get in the way of focusing on the broadening appeal of the Victoria Beckham brand. A lot of it’s centered on discovering new proportions. “This,” she said “is the ‘elevator trouser.’ We’ve developed it so that it really makes your legs look super-long.” You saw the proof of what she meant on the runway: pants which are high waisted and low-crotched, and which pool in a wide flare over the foot. When styled together with a cropped leather mini biker-jacket, or a shearling or peacoat, it looked grown-up and modern.A further elongating boost was given by her built-up shoulders in a navy tailored suit, large upstanding collars on coats, and the zip-up ski-inspired turtleneck sweaters. Beckham built out the realism by offering smart duffle coats, exaggerated trenches, and neat waxed outdoor jackets. Of the dresses she’s known for, there were a couple of iterations of the 1930s-style asymmetric slips which have clearly been a house success. Newer shapes were more in the vein of ballerina-length ball gowns, with plunging V-necks and a looped up volume that caught the air in movement.It was a good show, in more ways than one. When she hobbled out to take her bow, the applause was loud recognizing the hard work she’s put in, despite adversity.
2 March 2024
“I like to put a bit of myself into my collections,” says Victoria Beckham. For pre-fall she followed the threads of the semi-autobiographical mainline show she put on in Paris: ideas stemming from the weekend country-life she lives these days on the one hand, and from her ballet-mad girlhood on the other.In her London showroom, the continuity made a lot of sense as a collection informed both by her knack for styling—and by her detailed, practical empathy for making clothes that are interesting as fashion, but are also just useful for specific purposes. The contemporary-dance influence flows through her series of long, fluid dresses. Some have cutout necklines with wired curliqued inserts: “A sense of movement, freeze-framed,“ as she imagines it.Dresses have always been part of the VB vocabulary—in fact, Nicole Phelps described her debut in New York spring 2009, as “a dress collection.” Almost 15 years on, her short, body-con dresses have been replaced by other more graceful signatures her audience relates to. Women keep coming back for her ankle-skimming takes on modern tea dresses, ingeniously color-blocked knit dresses, and that simple-sexy-sophisticated ruching device she slips into slip-dresses. “It’s flattering, creating an optical illusion of bringing the waist in,” she observes.What’s newer, but also well-established by now, is her reputation for tailoring. That’s the side she refers to as “handsome feminity” in this collection—meaning the look of British heritage tweeds and preppy peacoats, styled together with turtlenecks, shirts, and cropped flares, or casualized with cargo pants or various permutations of denim pieces. She has a well-judged way of making these templates interesting as well as simple to wear. A country blazer has a shorn-off lapel, which is top-stitched down. A skirt has a cuffed hem and an asymmetrically placed zipper, pants have interesting collages of back pockets and exposed seams going on, and a suit jacket has cropped, elbow-length sleeves with a bit of raw lining hanging out of them.These are details which set her clothes just-enough aside from being uptight bourgeois classics—not far-out, but cool enough for a woman who appreciates interesting construction. This season, VB finished off some looks with silk neckerchiefs printed in the same colors as her new fragrance collection. Other versions of the silk scarves were wound around leather bag-handles or wittily made into whole bags.
Beckham clearly revels in subliminal branding. It’s subtly done, without recourse to too many logos, even though her empire now stretches from ready-to-wear and accessories to beauty and fragrance.
1 December 2023
As the late, great professor Louise Wilson used to command her Central Saint Martins MA fashion students when they were lost, confused, and pretentiously trying to be designer-ish: “Look at yourself in the mirror and start there.” Victoria Beckham never went to Central Saint Martins—being a mega–pop star at the time—but at this point in her fashion career, she’s come around to the wisdom of letting her autobiography lead her brand. “This is a very personal collection to me. It’s about my relationship with both dance and the British countryside,” she said before the show.Her ballet aspirations “started when I was three” and segued into early dance and performance instruction at college (and the fateful Spice Girls audition). The British countryside bit was right up-to-date: The Beckhams have a weekend house in Oxfordshire. Hence, Victoria knows her way around Wellies, brogues, and outdoor jackets.All of these elements were wrapped into the collection in the suggestion of dancers’ rehearsal jersey dresses and knitted leotards, “humble fabrics from the rehearsal studio,” as she put it, through to transparent tulle dresses referencing “the performance.” Some of the pieces had internal wiring, “to create an illusion of a gesture or posture.”Beckham’s storytelling embraced the relaxed, slightly deconstructed city tailoring she’s been developing—and wearing—for the past few seasons. Pretty, summery cream linen dresses were inspired by family weekend trips to a village antiques shop that stocks ’30s and ’40s tablecloths and napkins “that remind me of my grandparents,” she said.Her collection feels more centered and balanced now that she’s drawing on her lifestyle and experiences. The fact is, a lot of women would like to look something like Beckham when they see themselves in the mirror; the growing success of her beauty brand proves that. The launch of her new perfumes—three fragrances named after significant (and sexy) memories and locations from her life—coincided with her show. And who should be fronting the imagery for it, shot by Steven Klein? Victoria, of course.
30 September 2023
It’s hard to find clothes that are both easy to wear and interesting. Plain utility can feel unappealingly dull on the one hand, and on the other, designer clothes can be offputtingly over-complicated. Victoria Beckham is turning out to be someone who has a nice set of solutions to that tricky brief. As she puts it: “There really is a strong reality in the garments. Everything looks really quite simple, but it's all about the consideration, the execution, and the subtle details.”True. Somewhere along the line, her collections have assumed a non-uptight flow that strikes a good balance between usefulness and sophistication. Her confident assemblages of tailoring and mostly ankle-grazing fluid dresses have been garnering critical approval since she started showing in Paris a couple of seasons back.Still, it always takes a little while for a look to sink in, and then it’s another thing to follow up with tangible product that follows through on a good runway impression. On an appointment to view her spring pre-collection—on racks instead of photos—it’s clear that she’s got that covered, as well.Interestingly, it’s the hidden quirkiness in the cut and proportions that gives her clothes their appeal. “For example,” she said, “this pair of trousers has one leg wider than the other.” That’s something you definitely wouldn’t zoom in on in a lookbook, or maybe even when worn by a friend. It sounds eccentric, but what it does is create a softly pleated volume with a slouchy drape at the waist. Worn with one of Beckham’s precisely tailored blazers, it’s a look that emanates off-handedly grown-up chic.Asymmetry plays another role in her dressmaking. It’s not always easy to understand dresses that fly off madly in all sorts of directions, but here Beckham is using the possibilities of bias cutting, ruching, and collaging to great effect. Some of her eveningwear has the air of 1930s dance dresses, minus the vintage-y feel. There are day dresses that are somehow patchworked from pattern pieces that run in diagonals and seem to spiral around the body. You notice the dynamic lines because of the white piping edging each component.All that plays into hanger appeal, provoking the kind of curiosity liable to make a woman want to try something on rather than pass (as we do so often) because it looks too difficult. “I think it’s just about finding a point of difference,” Beckham observed.
That doesn’t sound like much, but in a world overloaded with competing product from high street to haute level, such considerations count for a lot.
30 May 2023
The mobile fluidity of Victoria Beckham’s opening look—a long collage of three shades of plissé silk, under a trench coat, with a white ostrich plume fluttering to one side—had a nonchalant air of grown up elegance as it approached along the cloistered aisle of her venue. In this, Beckham’s second runway show in Paris, it felt as if she’d hit her stride—a confident balance between creative dressmaking and wardrobe substance.Before the show, she was talking about eccentricity and playfulness with clothes. Her invitation showed a portrait of Drew Barrymore, reprising her role as Little Edie in theGrey Gardensmovie. She’s a friend, from when Beckham and her family lived in L.A. “It’s not the first time I’ve talked aboutGrey Gardens,” said the designer. “But I don’t want to take it literally. It’s more about being a bit more eclectic, having fun; almost like a little girl playing dress-up.”Checking back to what she did last season, it read as an evolution of the elongated silhouettes she was establishing then, with some gutsier demi-deconstructed tailoring strengthening the line-up. That’s a good thing as far as establishing a design identity goes—the power of building trust through continuity and repetition is all too easily forgotten these days.Anyone who associates VB with dresses and the whirl of VIP events—say, in her New York phase—might be surprised, though. There was none of the short-and sucked-in left here: instead, there was a much more relaxed and generously inclusive approach to shape, generally a modernized version of 1930s-ish silhouettes. So too with the tailoring—Beckham’s interpretation of the wide-shouldered jacket, optionally worn as a dress, looked spot on for the season.For actual evening or red carpet dressing, Beckham was up to some fun. She didn’t mention the word ‘Surrealist’ but that’s how a couple of her dresses—one leg out in a whole different way from a cliched thigh slit—happened to read. (Not to mention the trimmings of acrylic hair extensions, inspired, she said, by work of artist Solange Pessoa.) Building on the success of her excellent VB Beauty range, the future of Victoria Beckham the brand looks assured.
3 March 2023
Drama! Intrigue! Intricacy!Ooh, la-la.Ever since Victoria Beckham climbed the formidable steps of her first Parisian runway this September, a certain air of mystery has filled her London ateliers. “It’s a powerful femininity that’s quite seductive and alluring,” she said during a preview for her follow-up collection for pre-fall. Her words couldn’t have painted a greater contrast to the pragmatic glamour that defined the first 10 years of her brand. Now, she is changing the conversation. Her spiritual move to Paris—with its haute couture appointments and avant-garde esotericism—is ushering in a courageous but confident paradigm shift for Beckham that was evident even in a commercial proposal like her pre-collection.It’s all in the mystique: sculpturally, dangerously, strangely cut dresses and tops in abstract floral prints and dramatic cinematic colors, crafted in oscillating fluid wools or silks. Some were tensely ruched—part sensual, part aggressive—and others constructed entirely from circular-cut fabric discs that rotated erratically when the model walked down Beckham’s in-house podium. Little knitted tops were subverted in tinselling, so wrong they were right, and deviant mutations like a shiny trouser boot (“I ordered them in every color”) or a big bag adorned with the magnified chain of a men’s wrist watch (a VB signature) were nothing less than intriguing. Appropriately, she citedThe Eyes of Laura MarsandParis, Texasas influences.Beckham’s suiting illustrated her ambition better than anything. Here, she continued the Paris show’s studies of what can best be described as ‘authentic’ tailoring: architectonic cutting that reveals the steps of the tailor’s process by keeping temporary stitching as adornment and adding details like deconstructed panels. In Beckham’s case, those details feel figurative, like an honest representation of the learning curve she is still experiencing. “This is more than a pre-collection,” she said. “It’s about a wardrobe that is not compromised but still very elevated and very desirable. When I decided to show in Paris, I knew there was more pressure on the team and atelier to take the execution and technique to a whole other level whilst still making it feel easy.”Beckham may not have traveled the traditional fashion path to the Paris stage, but if that understanding of design is synonymous with intricacy—*intrigue—she is no stranger to it. Her brand was always a representation of herself.
If it used to reflect the public image she controls in interviews, photospreads, and on social media, now it’s perhaps beginning to embody the side of Beckham she doesn’t reveal to the public: all the things her fans and clients don’t know about her but would love to. And that, mesdames et messieurs, is a kind of intrigue the whispering rococo salons of Paris wrote the book on.
2 December 2022
Victoria Beckham’s first-ever show in Paris took place on the Friday afternoon of this hallowed Fashion Week schedule. The day before, Rick Owens presented tulle gowns the red of ox blood; in the morning Loewe showed shoes made of deflated balloons; and God only knows what Comme des Garçons has up its mastodon sleeve for Saturday. Invited to the French court of these avant-garde giants, Beckham—who started out in New York and relocated her show to London for her brand’s 10th anniversary—has reached the final chapter in her Heroine’s Journey into Fashion: the Approach to the Innermost Cave.“Things feel perfectly complicated,” she quipped during a preview for a collection that demonstrated all the knowledge she has accumulated during her 10-plus years as a fashion insider—and all the ambition she still harbors. She filled the cloisters of the church within Val-de-Grâce—the military complex where Yves Saint Laurent was hospitalized after his conscription breakdown—with a haunting aria fromMadama Butterflyand layered it with a throbbing, ticking, pungent beat by Chromatics.It was a fitting fanfare for what unfolded: Rianne Van Rompaey in a medical-pink rigorous, ankle-length dress sheathed over her body, its sleeves slit to the shoulder, its waist stitched at the front and pulled apart with strict ruching. Beckham underpinned it with opera gloves in VB-monogrammed lace the color of the model’s skin, matching tights, and high satin heels with almond-shaped toes. It was pretty twisted; a kind of delectably perverse glamour only outdone by the deviation of a bag made of blond-hair-colored tassels that poured out over Van Rompaey’s arm.“It’s a big deal for me to do a show in Paris. It’s been a dream, and therefore the collection has to reflect that,” Beckham said. In the process, she took no prisoners. The months before had seen her restructure her London ateliers to facilitate the artisanal level called for by a Paris show, allowing for the perhaps easy-looking but highly complex construction of dresses such as the aforementioned. It paved the way for beautifully and psychotically draped dresses—some seedily worn over latex tights and gloves—deconstructed cami dresses that looked as if they were about to slip off the body, and perversely bias-cut fishtail gowns in more medical pastels. A black dress was adorned in slashes as if it had been clawed into. Seen in stern succession, these silhouettes were a little bit evil, and incredibly flattering.
Beckham’s lifelong fashion education has clearly taught her a thing or two about subversion. If she’s demonstrated her taste for the “wrong” and “weird” before, this collection flexed a side to her practice that felt like virgin soil. Next to coats with edges cut to reveal their construction and trompe l’oeil leather jackets with the imprint of lapels, tailored jackets had been deconstructed at the back and reduced to their core frame, exposing the naked body. It was an intelligent (and quite Belgian) way of cutting that suited Beckham’s codes and pushed her into a game played by the big guys.“I can’t believe it’s finally happening. I’m very proud of where we’ve come,” she said of her Paris adventure. “With this show, I have enjoyed every single step of the way. When you think of everything we’ve been through, to be doing a show in Paris as an independent brand, it’s a really big deal. It feels like a real moment.” Beckham’s French fashion debut was an ambitious, dramatic, and quite sexual experience, which spoke volumes of her excitement for fashion. And on the day-to-day hamster wheel of Fashion Week, dedication like that is really quite rare.
30 September 2022
When Victoria Beckham was a little girl in the 1980s, her mother’s friend Frances’s crafting skills were the talk of Hertfordshire. “She used to make these flowers out of little bits of metal and then drape tights over them to create these funny little flowers. She was the same friend of my mum’s who used to give me her empty Chanel bottles,” Beckham reminisced during an appointment in her Hammersmith studio. “That was Frances.”She wasn’t sure if we should mention her surname—“I don’t know if she’s ready for the paparazzi outside her house”—but iterations on Frances’s flowers played a pivotal role in Beckham’s perhaps most glamorous collection ever. That might sound unexpected for a pre-collection, but since the pandemic, Beckham has been hard at work revamping the infrastructure of her brand. After merging her two lines and lowering her price point, she has curated a new team of designers and collaborators, and finessed her message. Now, she’s ready to amplify it.The result was evident: a sexy, cinematic proposal of skimpy, slinky lingerie dresses, architecturally ruched jersey numbers, louche blouses, and silk suits, and sensational secret-agent coats worthy of some erotic French film. She painted it all in Guy Bourdin-esque emerald, lipstick-pink, and champagne, and underpinned her elongated glamour-puss silhouette with thigh-high lycra boots—adorned with takes on Frances’s flowers. “There’s something tastefully eccentric about it,” she smiled, mischievously, likening the wardrobe to Lauren Hutton’s inAmerican Gigolo.There’s room for eccentricity chez VB. While Brand Beckham is a tightly run ship, she is growing into the British eccentricity that’s inevitable for a lady of her standing, and this collection had the oomph for which the assignment calls:Fa-bu-lous. It’s probably because you could feel Beckham’s core personality within these clothes. Gazing intensely at a pair of shiny green disco trousers, she said they were a tween-age dream come true. Cut to 1980s Hertfordshire…“I was probably ten years old. I was crazy aboutGrease, and this other friend of my mum’s promised me she’d get me a pair of the black satin trousers Olivia Newton John wears at the end. But this woman never gave me a pair of those trousers.
From that moment on, I knew never to promise a child something you’re not gonna follow through with, because it’s taken from then to now for me to create those bloody trousers myself,” she said, even if her bolder adult self went with green over black.“At first I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s questionable.’ But it’s now one of my favorites,” Beckham added. “During the pandemic, we did have to keep in mind that things had to come from a more commercial point of view. Now, I feel like I’ve taken myself out of my comfort zone with this collection. It’s been a while since I’ve had the confidence to do that. I feel like my confidence is back since my team and atelier feel secure. It feels like the start of a new chapter.”
22 June 2022
As a designer-and-style-icon package solution, Victoria Beckham and her brand embody a decidedly contemporary aspect of consumer fashion: styling. Her design propositions don’t simply make their case on a runway—or, as is currently the case, in a film—but when she is actually photographed by the paparazzi wearing them herself, showcasing how she would personally style her collection. It’s a way of proposing product entirely in tune with a social media age focused on the dress sense of the individual, where you now see people copying the way Bella Hadid wears her cross-body bag, the way Kim Kardashian lets her parka slide off the shoulder, or the styling trademarks of influential image-makers like AustralianVogue’s Christine Centenera, who always lets her leggings flare out over her heels.It’s creating a culture of fashion imbued with styling-focused details allowing the wearer to be their own stylist. To Beckham, playing with the functions of clothes is second nature, and she can’t resist getting in there, wrapping and tying and layering whatever look is standing in front of her. She demonstrated that on house models in her Paris showroom on Wednesday during an appointment for her new collection, which exemplified the idea of clothes made to be styled. While it had all the beautifully cut coats and blouses that come with the VB territory—things you just put on—the collection’s cleverness was to be found in garments purpose-made for layering or wrapping. In the case of a finely knitted onesie, for instance, Beckham said she would never wear it on its own.“I would wear it with a dress over the top. I would wear it with a skirt over the top,” she explained. “We’ve been doing polo-neck bodies for a while, and they’re great layering pieces. They really can finish off an outfit and make it very considered. With this knitted one, you’d absolutely put a dress over the top.” Body-conscious and sensual, it created a silhouette at once sexy and fully covered from head to toe, an idea reflected in sequined dresses layered with skin-tight transparent organza dresses on top for a filtrage effect that also helped to define the shape Beckham wanted to achieve. “I always love sequins, but it’s about finding a new, fresh way of doing them by either putting the organza or knitwear over the top. It’s a refined superhero sequin,” she said.
3 March 2022
Balance is a big theme with Victoria Beckham. As a pop star who became a WAG who became a high-fashion designer, her life and work have always been a balancing act of contrasts: the popular and the exclusive, the sexy and the serious, the flamboyant and the sophisticated. It is, in essence, the secret to her success. Like many other brands at this logomanic moment in time, this season Beckham is launching her own monogram. It’s a graphic but clean infinity V.B., which the designer emblazoned across viscose twill dresses, blouses, and trousers in her pre-collection. She referred to it as “subtle, elegant, and chic,” a trinity key to Beckham, who has consistently kept her label away from flashiness, a territory often occupied by monogram. “Most of my starting points in designing are things that I don’t like. And I don’t like monograms,” she said on a video call from her London office. “I was never that person who wore big brands all over. Neither I nor David. But I can see that a lot of people do like that, so the challenge was: How do we do branding in an elegant and sophisticated and timeless way that we can carry on?” Last year, Beckham absorbed her diffusion line into her main line and reduced her price point significantly, opening the doors to her label to a fangirl segment that isn’t content paying £800 for a blouse but wants to buy into her celebrity name. Subtle or not, a monogram will be irresistible to that customer, while the more—shall we say—subdued V.B. client still has plenty of options too.That balance defined this collection, which Beckham also used as an opportunity to make a declaration: “I want to bring sexy back but in my way. I don’t bury myself beneath clothes anymore. I want to celebrate being a woman. I want to accentuate my bum and my waist and feel sexy again. I want more structure, I want a leaner silhouette, and I want to make more of an event of dressing,” she said, with a diction that made you wish she’d run for prime minister someday. Beckham built that sexiness into her sleek, minimal, languid lines through seaming on dresses and trousers that shaped and elevated the derrière and through zips employed to structure dresses but that could be unzipped to show more skin.
14 January 2022
Unaware of the honour she had bestowed on him, Victoria Beckham’s newest muse caught the tail-end of our preview in the drawing room of their West London home. David Beckham emerged in a pale blue chambray shirt, the kind his wife had referenced in her collection because he wears them on their European holidays and she likes to steal them from his hotel wardrobe. “The oversized chambray shirts feel quite David, with a loose-fitting pant and a beautiful belt. You wanna be that person,” she said. “David always dresses. He always makes an effort. When we’re on holiday in Europe, he has a very pulled-together look, and I want to wear those pieces as well. It’s a shared suitcase.”The menswear gene has always been strong at Victoria Beckham. Following pre-spring’s brand restructure—which merged her two lines into one and reduced her price point by 40 percent—she is refining and enforcing those proposals, demonstrating to customers regular and new that restructuring isn’t the same as compromising. It was clear in the instant gratification this collection offered in the tailoring she credited to her husband, but also in more subversive propositions like a (very elevated) string vest styled with a gold chain, which Beckham attributed to Ray Liotta. “There’s something a littleGoodfellasthere.”You’d have to have seen her mood board—which also included a summer version of Leonardo DiCaprio—to recognize those references in the collection, but the work that goes into perfecting every corner of Beckham’s output at this stage in her brand’s life is highly researched and refined. “It’s very considered but looks very natural,” as she put it. That was true for casual dresses that looked quite sporty from the front, only to reveal D-rings with long, formal grosgrain ribbons running down the back, suggesting a ballroom silhouette. Or the orange and black dresses vaguely imbued with memories of swimwear in sculpted cut-outs.For all the sophistication that permeates her brand, however, Beckham will always be a daredevil at heart. We know it from her personal fashion history, but also from the kicks of directionality that pop up in her collections. It was nice to see that a restructure won’t stand in the way of that, either. Here, silk dresses printed with images of other dresses created optical illusions—with slimming effect. A pair of metallic bonded scuba jersey trousers looked like mercurial silver armour, and came in a knee-length skirt manifestation, too—her new hemline.
They read like something out of a TLC video: a major compliment, but certainly not for the faint of heart.“I don’t ever like to say ‘bad taste’ versus ‘good taste,’ because ‘bad taste’ has a bad connotation. But I like polarizing fabrics,” she said. “I’m really attracted to those more challenging fabrics, and to put something as challenging as an ice blue metallic skirt in, and show that with a beautiful piece of knitwear, I’m always attracted to that. It’s part of our DNA, that element of surprise.” As for the collection’s inspirational element of surprise, her husband seemed pleased enough with his new place on the mood board that future collaborations could take place. With a fashion history like David Beckham’s, imagine the possibilities!
21 September 2021
Victoria Beckham is merging her two lines into one affordable brand. “We’ve spoken so much over the last 18 months about our wardrobe, how we want to shop, how we want to spend, and there’s a real sweet spot there,” she said on a video call from her Dover Street store in London. “If I was going shopping, I wouldn’t know where I’d go to get really desirable clothes at an affordable price point.” The new brand, which amalgamates her pricey ‘Victoria Beckham’ line with her accessible diffusion line, ‘Victoria, Victoria Beckham,’ will cut the designer’s former price point by 40% and bet on a new sense of “ease” for the post-pandemic fashion climate. She will design four collections a year and achieve the new prices by challenging mills and working with new factories.As of the pre-spring collection she released today, 60% of Beckham’s collection now weighs in at $700. A suit, which used to retail at $2,800, will now be $1,700, while dresses will range between $490 and $2,000—“without compromising the desirability, quality, and ready-to-wear aesthetic,” she pointed out. Since before the pandemic, Beckham has been adding categories like cosmetics and beauty to her business in a simultaneous restructuring and expansion targeted at turning around losses, which, due to her fame, make news in the mainstream press in ways most other designers are spared. But Beckham doesn’t want a beauty-funded brand with a vanity clothing project. “We want to be strong in ready-to-wear while expanding across all categories,” her CEO Marie LeBlanc de Reynies said.Beckham’s pre-spring lookbook eased into her first take on a more democratic proposal with a sculpted floor-length dress featuring a dramatic cut-out above the décolletage: a clear statement that “affordable” isn’t the same as demure. Tailoring and shirting, either nipped or magnified in all the interesting places, bore no sign of departing from the designer’s directionality, but she stressed that comfort had been at the forefront of the brand’s “rebirth.” Packing for New York last month, Beckham recalled, “There were certain things I pulled out of my wardrobe that just didn’t feel, in my gut,right. There was nothing wrong with them, but the world is a very different place. I want more ease now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a strong look.”
24 June 2021
From Manchester to Madrid and now Miami, Victoria Beckham has always tempered her fashion reinventions to her environments. “The way they dress here is so different from anything I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s just fantastic. It’s a less-is-more approach,” she said with a big smile via a video call from the Magic City, where her husband, David, is working on his soccer team, Inter Miami. Her new collection wasn’t an exercise in scanty dressing, but the sparse public wardrobes of her temporary home did somehow echo her post-pandemic ethos. “It’s more relaxed. The little details we used to obsess over—there’s less of that. We weren’t in a position to do that, to be honest with you, and I like this sense of freedom,” Beckham explained.After the financial shock waves of COVID-19—and a minimized spring collection—this season marked Beckham’s pared-down foot forward. She accessorized it with glitter boots as a symbol of her new vision for both her fashion and her business, which offers her customer an essential and adaptable wardrobe, with pieces to dress it up or down. “I sell clothes,” said Beckham. “I don’t sell so many shoes and bags that my collections are just about ticking a fashion box. They’re about creating clothes that people want to wear and can really wear. That’s why commerciality is not a swear word to me.” Starting this season, her precollections will be elevated into her main collections, with store drops beginning as early as May.Representative of a much bigger sales collection, the look book she released today demonstrated what a consolidated Victoria Beckham looks like. Rather than introducing new complex cuts or ambitious experimentation, familiar VB garments bore testimony to a certain studiousness: They’ve been simplified and perfected. Prairie and flapper dresses were streamlined; her slinky, everyday long-sleeve dresses were recut for a T-shirt-like ease; and tailoring looked as optimized for comfort as it must have felt. Within this process, Beckham retained the sculptural lines that distinguish her from the norm and justify her googolplex price tags. (Note to the nonfashion press: VB doesn’t sell dresses; she sells a silhouette.)Layered with the pragmatic “market categories” they talk about in commercial fashion, the collection was a candid exercise in customer activation. But as Beckham was the first to address, “People are buying less tailoring, but they’re buying a lot of denim and knitwear.
And how do we make that desirable within the collection? The execution has to be perfect.” For anyone hankering for more pizzazz, there were those knee-high silver sparkle boots—reflected in dresses covered in sequins—and some rather subversive floral prints. In one instance, the latter clashed in a mad floaty dress that evoked some of Beckham’s more directional collections. Her appetite for fashion with a capital F isn’t going anywhere. “We never want anything to be boring,” as she put it.But it was her way with coats that really exemplified that elusive and timeless magnetism of clothes you just want to own. Beckham fused a military sensibility with her own, scattering various uniform elements around garments and nailing a navy admiral’s coat with red contrast lining, delicately and delectably framing every edge of it. “People ask me if I think people will buy less when we come out of lockdown, and I hope they will! We want to sell clothes, don’t get me wrong, but I hope people will want to invest in pieces they really want to wear. Buy a piece and get your wear out of it. Don’t just buy it for one season,” said Beckham. That coat—and many others that didn’t make the look book cut—instantly demonstrated her intentions.
13 February 2021
“Tasteless! Shocking! Classless!” read the daily Victoria Beckham tabloid headlines minutes before our preview. She had posted an Instagram collection teaser of—hold on to your 21st-century hats—a model’s naked nipples veiled by a translucent azure blue blouse. “There was me thinking we all had nipples,” the designer shrugged. “I would like you to write that they are my breasts, because they are,” she added, ever the sarcastic. “They’re good, aren’t they?”Unlike most other designers, Beckham is constantly confronted with the contrast between her industry’s fashion-forward opinions of what is “sexy” or “cool” versus the more traditional tastes of her broad mainstream audience. During lockdown when she accepted her government’s furlough scheme, she was also the only designer to face front-page scrutiny for it. As a result, she dropped the furloughs and soldiered on.In that sense, Beckham’s Instagram teaser was an apt reflection of her brand’s status quo as well as her new visual direction for a changed fashion world: stripped down. Faced with a challenging financial business situation, she reduced her typical 45 looks to 20, cast just four models, and replaced early plans for intimate salon shows with a short film shot in her favorite East London contemporary art gallery, Victoria Miro. She opened the presentation with an inspired speech about this momentous chapter in time, putting her original stage training to good use.This was no post-lockdown pity party, however. “I found the whole thing liberating. Everything changed this season and it reminds me why I fell in love with the industry in the first place, all those years ago when I used to do smaller presentations and narrate through them,” Beckham said. “We weren’t in a position to have 10 fashion stories and narrow it down to one or two. We had to be very focused and strategic. I’ve really enjoyed coming to work. So much. That sense of freedom is what my business needs right now.”If recent Victoria Beckham collections have reached a trussed-up tailoring high, she uncinched her metaphorical corset here. Her lines were longer, more languid, even slouchy. Floor-length jersey dresses caressed the body rather than constricted it. She loosened the waists of maxidresses and allowed them to drop. Her 1970s tailoring felt more lenient in form, and she described the season’s super-flared trouser, split at the back, as “puddling on the floor.” Cutouts felt sensual rather than strict.
21 September 2020
“Plastic trousers with a great high heel and a jacket!” Victoria Beckham’s penchant for tight black vinyl pants was reignited during lockdown—she was brandishing a pair in a preview of her resort collection at her west London head office last week. The reason this notion might have occurred to a designer who’d been working from the idyll of her back garden in the Cotswolds might have been instantly surmised by Spice Girls’ aficionadas of the ’90s. Because on July 4th, her husband, David, posted a romantic 21st wedding anniversary Instagram message beneath a clip of the Spice Girls’ 1996 hit “Say You’ll be There.” In it Victoria (then-aka Posh Spice) dances in a shiny black all-in-one, causing her future husband to declare to a soccer bro, “Ohhhh like that one in the little black catsuit.”Victoria Beckham didn’t mention this connection as she whisked the plastic pants back on the rail, but she does believe that the women who buy her label will have a lot of pent-up desire for partying by the time this collection arrives. “When we started to work on resort, we knew the first drop was going to be in December. And we thought, well, by then everyone’s going to be out of their leggings, and actually want to get dressed and go out.”She’s hedged her bets as to what that might mean. On her reference board were visuals of David Bowie at the height of his glam rock years, sporting gold-flecked lamé pinstripes and shrunken rainbow-striped Lurex sweaters. If the green light is back on for social-life as it used to be by the end of 2020, then VB’s tuxedo tailoring will be at hand. One terrific Thin White Duke–era suit with a cropped jacket and high-waisted pleated trousers worn with a lace basque is a standout.Dresses? Yes, they’re there too—an easy red dress with an ’80s-style cavalier collar (slightly reminiscent of the young Princess Diana); one of VB’s draped cocktail numbers with a covered-up front and naked back, suspended from criss-crossed rouleau straps.Still, there’s a pragmatism here. VB is reemphasizing the ’70s-ish denims—high-cut flares with contrast patch pockets—that were formerly relegated to her second line. It’s definitely the right time for that. Whether or not sparkly parties will be a thing again, there are surely thousands of us who are feeling that our worn-out, lived-in repertoire of jeans could do with a new addition.
16 July 2020
Victoria Beckham’s confident wardrobe-building streak has become a calming inspiration for frazzled women. After London storms blew a rain-drenched crowd into the Banqueting House in Whitehall, she sat them down and showed clothes for winter that people only wished they’d been able to pull out of their closets this morning.It wasn’t just the sight of two voluminous mackintoshes that did it. VB has developed a knack for putting her practical-chic advisory guide into action. Check, for a start, the way that she paired substantial English tweed crombie-style overcoats, worn open over tonally matching skirts or culottes. That, ladies, gives the appearance of a new kind of suit. Voila, a combo which smartly replaces the bulk of layering coats over blazers, replacing them with knits and blouses.That’s the kind of thought-out problem-solving attitude women get a buzz from. Beckham has reached the stage in her career where she doesn’t attempt to shift the design needle so much as point it in a useful, wearable direction. Her collection read as a checklist of the season’s trends. She registered the return of black, foregrounding dress silhouettes with skin-baring necklines, and ended up with more options for evening.Beckham picks up on things. There were negative-space argyle knits (which the young London menswear designer Stephan Cooke pioneered), and a couple more of her hit shetland sweaters—one in cornflower blue, the other egg-yolk yellow. There was also a lot of voluminous sleeve-action in shapes which started from the necklines of blouses and dresses, and belled out.The ability to make sense of the complications of fashion—making it seem easy, but without dictating uniformity—is a woman designer’s special skill. Increasingly, that’s Victoria Beckham’s mission, not grand concepts or season-based swerves, and many women are more than content with that.
16 February 2020
Something of the ’70s is going around again—flared-trouser suits, bourgeois A-line midis and print blouses, poor-boy sweaters, stack-heeled knee-high boots. Victoria Beckham has had all those Saint Laurentisms embedded into her practice for a while, meaning she practices what she preaches. “Personally, when I go out in the evening, I want to wear a tuxedo,” she said, pointing out a black evening suit with a satin belt.At a moment when every purchase is becoming more considered, it’s good to know when designers have personally put their clothes through their paces. Victoria Beckham’s pragmatic perfectionism gives her an eye for an edited wardrobe, sparked up by unusual color combinations—that’s the nub of her brand these days. Her pre-fall is a continuation of her day-to-evening demo of what to wear with what, with a grown-up lifestyle, work patterns, occasions, and climate factored in.The knack here is Beckham’s instinct for cutting a fine line between usefulness and glamour. In a time when flattering tailoring is still hard to come by, she has the fit of a high-waist pant and neatly proportioned jacket sorted out, a cut which applies across jumbo-cords and three-piece pinstripes, through to the black evening suit.The virtue of her look book is that it also does the work of breaking the pieces down into separates. It’s more or less the basis of which all women in the ’70s and ’80s bought and switched around their clothes, making the judgment about adding new things according to whether they worked with the rest—and that’s a handy reverb to tune back into today.
13 January 2020
When you think about it, the landscape of fashion is populated with female British designers and self-starting fashion entrepreneurs, and Victoria Beckham graduated to that disparate sisterhood a decade ago. Happy anniversary, VB! Only today people scurried to make her show in the middle of a Londonwide circuit that included Simone Rocha, Margaret Howell, Emilia Wickstead, and Phoebe English. Their common denominator? Being certain and direct, each in her own way. The Victoria Beckham way? Enveloping women in empathy, attainable easy-chic solutions, and the charming force field of her self-irony.For Spring, Beckham’s options were essentially whittled down to neat-and-together tailoring with a slight ’70s flavor and flowy, waist-free silk ankle-length dresses. “There’s a lot of focus on dresses,” said Beckham in a preview at her West London HQ. “I like the ruffles that dance as you’re moving. There’s a lot of volume. The patterns are much more complicated, but they feel very light and flattering—you feel very little in them.”In the olden days of Victoria Beckham, feeling “very little” meant being encased in power-meshed body-con knee-length dresses. (See how far she’s come by checking outher first show, reviewed by Nicole Phelps in 2009.) With time Beckham has gone with the general flow (which is now very liberatingly flowy, thanks to the influence of Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino), while always—to her credit—scrutinizing why and how any garment translates as practicable and relatable to a laywoman.She has that rationale down pat now, and it’s instructive. “The silhouettes aren’t complicated, so I like to express myself by wearing color,” she said. “I only used to wear black when I was younger, and I never understood when certain people used to say they didn’t like you wearing black. But then I got it—color is so much more flattering!”It was a hot September day, and the audience couldn’t help but fixate on the vibrant airiness of the dresses Beckham dealt out singly in vibrant purple, leaf green, lemon, cinnamon, or pale beige. “If I can give women the confidence to wear greens and purples or windowpane checks, I think it’s great,” she said. “It makes you feel so good and confident.”
15 September 2019
“I’m always thinking when it comes to parties or red carpet, What do I want to wear?” said Victoria Beckham during a walkthrough at her London studio. The answers were within her Resort collection: what Beckham really, really wants around Christmastime is plenty of chic, ’70s-ish tuxedo options, “either this emerald green one, or the strong white suit, which I’d wear with this sheer black dotted knit underneath,” she said. “High-waisted trousers with quite a narrow leg, going into a bit of a flare. A bit Helmut Newton–ish.”She shot the lookbook outdoors in the sumptuous topiary- and statuary-laden grounds of Chiswick House, one of the classical delights of west London. The collection is classic, specifically observed VB—the components of a wardrobe she’s constructed from a combination of what she wants to wear herself and the response she’s getting from customers.Call that ability to deploy lived experience as a design tool her grown-up girl-power. A large part of it is her focus on a streamlined system of dressing, sparked up with clear styling directions—something she’s hit her stride with since she started showing in London two seasons ago. For Resort, Beckham carried on from her applauded Fall show—A-line midis, belted coats, silk dresses, leg-elongating pants, tuckable shirts, and form-fitting sweaters.In VB’s view, the key is making chic look fun by putting “beautiful but strange colors together.” It’s clever: you solve the problem of dealing with bourgeois beige and retro brown by contradicting them with a bright blue leather shirt or a stretchy orange toe-less boot. That goes for the evening suit, too: wherever Victoria Beckham manifests in front of paparazzi this coming winter, you can bet there’ll be a pointy pump in a surprising color peeping out beneath her perfectly cut flares.
17 June 2019
How much do designers calculate the psychological effect of color on us? In a season when spirits have gotten more than a little ground down (to put it mildly) by the sight of drab grays and browns set against an even gloomier political backdrop, Victoria Beckham’s first look—a white windowpane-checked skirt suit, and red blouse, worn with zingy scarlet stretch-leather spike-heeled boots—was an instant mood-lifter. That vibrant red—let’s call it VB vermillion—must do well for her, because it was scattered through her Spring collection, not to mention liberally repped by audience members.Here, for Fall, it popped up again, threaded through her proposal for pepping up the season in a collection she called “an A-Z of a woman’s life. She’s a lady, but she’s not ladylike. She’s proper, but she’s not prim.”Since she’s come back to show on home ground in London, there’s been something less clinical, more approachable about what Beckham does with her ready-to-wear. It hardly warrants a conceptual narrative to interpret this: She puts together flattering shapes and combinations of color which are persuasively easy to wear—and all the more persuasive if she wears them herself, because there are millions of women and girls who hang on her every press appearance and Instagram story. The high-waisted flared pants in this collection got their introduction to her public in early January, when the Beckhamfamillemade their way to a breakfast sortie at the Kent & Curwen menswear show that David is involved with.It’s fair betting that the direction of this whole collection sprang from the popular feedback from that VB trouser teaser. Seventies flares led to bourgeois chain prints, pencil skirts, tiny argyle sweaters, and big pointed shirt collars as sure as night follows day. VB, of course, is a dress brand, and they looked good, too, when she hinted at ’40s–’70s silhouettes.There was nothing too literal, nothing tooLove Story–ish or Saint Laurent ’70s about it. This is a collection by a modern woman for modern women. And it cheered us all up.
17 February 2019
Well! The heels have gone up again at Victoria Beckham. “I love these boots—these great, superlative, stretchy, sexy boots,” she said, striding across her studio in London’s Hammersmith district. “Because as you take something more tough like this, maybe with one of our skirts and blouses, it really elevates it.” They’re toeless, leg hugging, and burgundy, these boots, by the way, and they do a lot of work across outfits in the lookbook.That’s very Victoria Beckham, too—setting women practical examples of one accessory that can change things up in multiple contexts. Or, on the other hand, just putting on something simple yet definitive and going out and about with the family. As she did when she wore the wide-leg, high-waisted, bird’s-eye tweed pantsuit on Sunday, January 6, to go to the Kent & Curwen breakfast-time menswear show with husband David and son Brooklyn.You can’t see much tailoring in this lookbook, strangely, but suffice to say, female attendees that day hardly got past the “Happy New Year” before asking VB what her suit was. You’ll have to take it as read—or Google the occasion—that she has nailed the ’70s pantsuit look at the ideal moment.In other news: There are plenty of carryovers from her London show, which went down well for Spring, like the camisole top with which Stella Tennant made an entrance. Now it’s in the neckline of a fitted black midi dress, amalgamated into a pajama-striped jumpsuit, as well as being a stand-alone, worn under a black pantsuit.What’s nice about Beckham is how much she’s a boot-is-a-boot, a touser-is-a-trouser woman. In a world where so much verbiage is sloshed around to dress up what are, basically, just clothes, it’s refreshing to talk to someone who speaks about clothes and how to wear them, and cares only about designing what women respond to. Her secret weapon is that this unpretentious pragmatism is backed up by interesting, deftly chosen fabrics, again not really appreciable in this lookbook. There is what the eye sees in terms of styling, but it’s what the hand touches and how a thing fits and flows on a body that converts an idea into a luxury that women will actually buy. It’s only a pre-collection, but close up, Beckham’s clothes have both things going on.
16 January 2019
It has been a decade since Victoria Beckham set herself up as a designer, putting her life as Posh Spice firmly behind her. There’s only one connection she’s prepared to draw between her business now and the Spice Girls then: “What we did was celebrate being different. We showed it was okay to be who you are,” Beckham said. “And that’s what this is about—empowering women through fashion. All women are different, and there’s something for everybody.”It’s funny to think that VB is an icon in the memories of millennial and Gen Zers in their 20s, and, simultaneously, a wardrobe-inspirer to women of her own 40s-and-above generation. With her anniversary show, held in a gallery right next door to her Dover Street store, she recognized that: focusing all the hoopla around her anniversary on asserting the age-inclusivity of her brand. It was a smart, bracing surprise to see her opening her show with another British icon who started her own lasting career around the Spice Girl era, that avatar of ’90s cool and elegance Stella Tennant.She was in a white trouser suit with wide pants, a lace-trimmed satin camisole, and silver metallic low-heeled boots. That got things very much off on the right foot. Tasha Tilberg and Aymeline Valade also walked, alongside the likes of Rianne Van Rompaey and Edie Campbell—supermodels of the new generation.Mention of casting has to be made in passing, as the extreme youth of the models she’s used in her New York shows has often provoked criticism. But never mind that now! With this new, relatable atmosphere in the room and no distancing catwalk, there was nothing getting in the way of a clear view of a precise, compelling array of how-to-get-dressed looks.If there was a theme, it was layering—the ’90s notion of wearing dresses over trousers—but poshed and polished up in a way that only the faintest ghost of Courtney Love’s slip dresses could be recognized by women old enough to have witnessed grunge. Not to be misunderstood: Everything about Victoria Beckham’s work is hyper-clean—the zinging colors, the crisp edges of striped shirts, the controlled assurance of every component. That way of focussing attention is its strongest attraction, in fact.By Look 2, the eye was trained on an orange dress which, at first glance, seemed to have a pair of tan leggings beneath.
Wrong: These were actually super-slim crepe trousers with a V-shape split in the front hem, neatly showcasing the top of another pair of low slipper boots, this time in white. This turned out to be the key component of the collection—a product shown 11 times in different colors (burgundy, black, white, cornflower blue, red) under tailored suit jackets and tunics, handkerchief-point knit dresses, and a lovely lace shirt. Something VB truly believes in, then? For sure! When she came out at the end, she was wearing a pair under her tan blazer—thus sending a global message about this versatile piece for day, night, and pretty much any time between.Whatever Beckham wears, women race to buy. She knows that. Victoriabeckham.com is now fully geared up to take the onslaught from her fanbase in all generations. Starting today, T-shirts of the Juergen Teller print of VB in a shopping bag are available online, as well as (genius marketing stroke, this), the spike-heeled white pumps she’s wearing. Meanwhile, now that the show is over, VB is, she laughed, “playing shopgirl,” and personally selling to customers, signing T-shirts, and lunching with major spending fans who have flown in from “America, Australia, Asia, [and] Mexico.” Her talent is being able to create the feeling of a relationship with her customers. The feedback on models came from them, she says, during another lunch at Scott’s she threw last year. The more women are able to project themselves onto the person wearing the clothes, the more likely they are to leap at buying. Seems basic, but it felt like a liberating breakthrough for Beckham as she faces the next 10 years of growing her brand. “I’ve got my foot on the gas,” she promised.
16 September 2018
There’s a beautiful painterly army print running through Victoria Beckham’s Resort 2019 collection that takes the designer right back to her Spice Girls days. “Do you remember that dress?” she asked, referring to the camouflage mini she wore in the boot camp scene of the 1997 film Spice World.“The rest of the girls were doing an assault course in full army fatigues, and I was tottering around in high heels. That was actually a great dress. This is a bit of a nod to that.”Beckham has come a long way since that moment. Her company celebrates a decade in business this year, and she’s sitting in her brand-new West London HQ planning her forthcoming September show, which will take place in her native city for the very first time. “It feels like the beginning of a new chapter,” she said, before turning her attention back to that army print, which covers a lightweight boxy jacket with black leather pockets, a neat pencil skirt, as well as the Eva bag, knee-high Rise boots, and a T-shirt. “It feels like a staple that every woman should have in her wardrobe,” added Beckham.This season’s tailored, feminine clothes reflect Beckham’s own desire to wear a more fitted, less oversize silhouette. The sultrier mood came through powerfully in a short, softly tailored black tuxedo dress. “When I put this on, with the sleeves pushed up, I feel a bit rock ’n’ roll,” she said of the look, which sat alongside an impeccable Japanese denim trench, ethereal silk print dresses and skirts, and strong suiting in milky banana and rich red tones. What’s brilliantly clear is that Victoria Beckham stands for relatable, wearable clothes rather than showpieces. Though there were a few of those here, too, notably the chic spliced-sleeve, buckle-neck navy number that Beckham wore to the recent royal wedding, which was revisited here in both off-white and magenta—a patriotic palette for a commemorative year.
14 June 2018
It was 10 years ago that Victoria Beckham invited curious editors and buyers to a suite in the Waldorf Towers to see her debut collection and introduced the world to her “sucky-sucky” dress. She’ll mark the milestone by taking her Spring 2019 show to London in September, a nod to her British roots. Her Fall show this morning was held in a new location, the James Burden Mansion on East 91st Street, before a much smaller crowd than usual. “I want you to be able to see the details, and to hear them,” Beckham said at a preview.Fashion has changed in unforeseen ways over the past decade. Instagram was born, which has been a boon for celebrity designers like Beckham. Streetwear and athleisure happened, too. Displaying a savvy adaptability, Beckham has shifted her label’s aesthetic. Recent collections have been much more tailoring focused than the body-hugging jersey sheaths of her launch collection augured. She hasn’t gone full tracksuit, but she has embraced ease.True to new form, this collection had a focus on suiting, mostly in shades of military drab. Beckham emphasized the waist with strappy belts and added styling details like leather spats–cum–leg warmers or leather hoodie-dickeys that gave the clothes an avant-garde, athleticized quirk. Silk dresses were either asymmetrically pleated or printed in a deceptively real faux fur motif. Coats were sometimes doubled, and the tote bag was supersized. A couple of bright shots of color would not have gone amiss, but a rich leopard-spot coat did add a welcome element of luxe. Phoebe Philo’s departure from Céline was announced in December, and professional women in this industry and others beyond let go a communal wail of grief. In the big picture, it’s a category that feels underserved, which is perplexing considering it’s a group with money to spend. When those women start looking for alternatives, Beckham’s is one of the collections they could shop.
11 February 2018
We never would’ve pegged Victoria Beckham as a crystal lover. She seems so left-brained and rational—an ambitious, goal-oriented model of efficiency. But a quick Google search and a glance at her new Pre-Fall collection prove otherwise. Beckham reports that she keeps crystals in her homes and that she’s bought them for all of her team; according to theDaily Mail, she uses crystals backstage in a preshow ritual designed to bring good fortune. This season, she’s incorporated them into her accessories offering, making pendant necklaces and charms to suspend from belt loops or bags. “It’s very personal and something I believe in,” Beckham said. “I think it’s a nice touch.”Among the other things she believes in for Pre-Fall are a chunky wool sweater in a mélange yarn worn with glossy burgundy leather pants, a lilac suede short-sleeved jacket and matching lilac suede flares, an emerald green bias-cut silk dress with a sexy open back, and an asymmetrical, off-the-shoulder dress tailored from navy men’s suiting material. Beyond those standouts, the impression was of a day-to-night wardrobe that’s super-luxurious but not ostentatious, and minimal but not severe by any stretch. While Beckham’s clothes aren’t trendy, they feel current nonetheless. That’s down to the proportions (see: the long, pooling trousers; the modest high necks), the emphasis on knits of all kinds, and to an unexpected, quite vivid palette that pairs mint with rust, as one example.Speaking of goals, Beckham met a big one last month when she announced a new round of financing to the tune of $40 million. She says she’ll be zeroing in on her retail presence and e-commerce in 2018.
6 December 2017
At a preview the day before her show, Victoria Beckham talked about femininity. “Delicacy can be strong,” she said. It’s an idea that’s taking hold this New York season, with transparencies and soft colors emerging as key trends. Beckham had both of these in abundance. The first model out wore a creamy yellow check shirt, which was boxy, oversize, and tucked into a dusty rose organza pencil skirt; lilac leather high-vamp pumps punctuated the look.Beckham’s thinking on femininity has changed over the years, to be sure. She’s long since traded in her hourglass dresses and stilettos for tailoring and—even occasionally—flats, but lately she’s been feeling for clothes with a real sense of slouch. For every pencil skirt here, there was a midi-length kilt barely hanging off the model’s hips. She riffed on the pajama look, elevating her matching sets in a subtle but substantial floral jacquard. That said, the slim, tapered pants of her suits looked fresh and new, especially in a light shade of lilac accessorized with mint-color pumps and dark green earrings. Another interesting proposition: the almost-to-the-ankle-length skirt tailored at the waist like trousers.The gossamer weight of Beckham’s silks reinforced what she said about delicacy, as did her prints—one of which reproduced a moiré pattern and another that was a photo print of assorted striped fabrics. But alongside delicacy this collection had whimsy, and that was more of a surprise. You saw it in the crushed ruffles of Pierrot collars, in a silver anklet dangling a charm, and in the red glitter mules that accompanied salmon-color pants. Your very own pair of ruby slippers.
10 September 2017
To tweak the old adage, you can tell a lot about a woman by her shoes. The star of Victoria Beckham’s freshly expanded footwear offering is a low-heeled pointy-toed slingback in safety-cone orange. Extrapolating from there, the VB woman is a fashion risk-taker (that color), one with a keen sensible streak (those reasonable heels). A quick click through the designer’s new Resort lineup will reveal that the description essentially fits. On the one hand, she’s cutting a tube skirt in sheer shine mesh and pairing it with a boxy plaid men’s shirt. On the other, the leather collar on an easy belted technical jersey dress is washing machine safe—no dry-cleaning necessary. Beckham said she loves working on pre-collections. “There’s a freedom in just making desirable pieces that my customer wants to wear.”Category by category, there were pieces here that met that definition. Beckham is cutting her trousers super-lean through the thigh and with a righteous flare at the ankle this season. They have a compelling swagger. On the dress front, beyond that easy belted number, there was a fitted but fluttery style in a flyweight Japanese crepon fabric, and an elegant sheath with an asymmetrical hem and silver chains dangling from the side seam. Those chains were a surprise detail on an openwork sweater and at the twist neckline of a dusty rose silk dress. Not sure about the washing machine with those, but they were a cool detail in a winning collection.
6 June 2017
“I’ve never really worn a blazer with a skirt,” Victoria Beckham said in the midst of fittings a day before her show. For a designer searching for a creative spark, that’s just about the best reason to try something—you simply haven’t done it before—and it proved a worthwhile exercise for Beckham this season. She paired her structured, slightly oversize blazers and sheer chiffon skirts with slouchy, knee-high leather boots. The look was a world away from where she started eight and half years ago—pulled together, yet relaxed, with versatility built in. Sometimes the billowy skirt came with a generously proportioned turtleneck sweater (gorgeous in a raspberry and claret color combination). Other times she put a full pantsuit together, but she retained the easy attitude with full, hip-slung trousers and martingales that pulled the jackets partially back, as if the models had just encountered a strong breeze.Though she’s expanded well beyond the hero dress, Beckham is still plenty cognizant of its one-and-done appeal, so there was no shortage of options. That brilliant raspberry reappeared on a long-sleeved, high-necked, peekaboo-backed chiffon midi. It’s an of-the-moment silhouette, highly wearable in its covered-upedness, but with a surprise flash of skin. A Paul Nash exhibition at the Tate Britain provided inspiration for the graphic patterns that appeared on similarly cut styles in jersey, as well as on color-blocked knits, like a matching turtleneck and tube skirt.In counterpoint to the ease of the tailoring and dresses, her new season bags are quite structured. The square styles the models clutched to their hips were modeled after a vanity case, inspired, she said, by her Estée Lauder partnership. Beckham’s power women would probably prefer something that will fit an iPad; she has those, too.
12 February 2017
Victoria Beckham’s Pre-Fall mini show was bookended by a blouson and skirt in ivory stretch-teddy bouclé—a glorified, glamorous sweatsuit, in essence—and a black Le Smoking cut mannish and slouchy. In between were the building blocks of an über-chic wardrobe circa 2017. Pink coat? Check. There’s going to be so much pink next year you can practically consider it a neutral. Beckham’s came in a marled fabric flecked with gray. Bias-cut slip dress? Check. She offered hers in a reverse pinstripe, black stripes on a white background, and made it before-dark, office appropriate with the accompaniment of a matching silk collarless button-down. Menswear plaids? Check, check, check. We’ve seen plenty of plaid in the week we’ve been shuttling around town on Pre-Fall appointments, but Beckham’s looks especially crisp and natty. She also had the by-now de rigueur ribbed-knit dress and asymmetric geometric earrings.In other words, Beckham is thinking way, way beyond her famous wiggle dress. But that has been the case for years. What this collection proved is she’s among the very top resources for of-the-moment statement-makers. Beckham herself was wearing one such look: a silk blouse and jacquard skirt in an oversize blue and white wave print. There’s no going incognito through the airport—or anywhere—in an outfit like that. The collection’s other surprise charmer was a brushed-wool sweater and matching tube skirt in a Fair Isle motif. It sounds almost homespun, and it was, save for the shoes, which provided a sharp counterpoint: nail-head spikes in a gorgeous shade of turquoise.
6 December 2016
Victoria Beckham’strousers—that is, the ones she wore herself—practically commanded a sidewalk event of their own duringNew York Fashion Week. In the days leading up to her Spring show, no less than seven different pairs were counted by Beckham-watchers as she shuttled to-and-fro, culminating in the pair of cropped chinos in which she took her bow at the end of her runway. Now, she’s releasing the pictures from a Resort collection she revealed in her London store in June. The images here unveil a portion of the “full library of trousers . . . comprising both casual, smart, and tuxedo silhouettes” she has lined up for shoppers.Wide-legged, pleated into a high waist, and cropped. A slouchy, satin sweatpant variant. Narrow, twisted pin-striped pants with button detail at the hem. A couple of easy jumpsuits. All these practical styling add-ons are hinted at here, looking good with pointy, white New Wave flats or blocky-heeled pumps. It’s not a total commitment to full-time trousering she’s advocating, though. The Beckham point of view encompasses relaxed midi dresses and skirts, and pretty retro micro-floral prints, too—maybe she’s allowing her English side come into play? Anyway, it’s a grown-up, relatable lifestyle brand she’s transitioning into, here—at quite a distance from either the cocktail and eventwear she began with, or the severe minimalist phase she fell for a couple of seasons ago. A woman doesn’t have to feel “on” all the time, does she?
11 October 2016
To study paparazzi pics of Victoria Beckham in the weeks leading up to her show gives you a good idea about the direction her collection will take. Over the summer, Beckham sported looks with more volume. At a preview a couple of days ago she wore slouchy pajama-style pants and flats. Feeling relaxed, then? The theory bore fruit on her runway this morning. She continues to distance herself from her wiggle dress early days. For Spring, she made a point about ease by washing and crushing precious silks and velvets, deconstructing clingy knit dresses so necklines exposed the clingy knit bras underneath, and sending most looks out with flat knee-high boots made from canvas and leather. Bras, in general, were a big story, standing in for shirts under a couple of silk suits, and pairing with skirts that came out from hip bones. These might prove too relaxed for ladies of a certain age, or anyone over a size 4.The collection’s undisputed selling point was its luscious color. The peppermint and lilac of her crushed silk velvet, which she also used for unstructured cross-body bags, has an almost iridescent quality, and the orange of a ribbed knit dress fairly pulsated. Elsewhere, she printed white leather with delicate floral motifs. The sleeper hit just might be a navy dress in multiple layers of chiffon so light Beckham and co. have taken to calling it sea foam. That’s the kind of relaxed a woman could really get into.
11 September 2016
Google-image searchVictoria Beckhamand you'll find a lot of pics of the former Posh Spice in corsets. Beckham’s style has evolved much since the Spice Girls’s ’90s heyday, but she’s understood the power of an hourglass silhouette from the beginning. When she launched her eponymous brand, she made it her signature. Having drifted away from it over the years, she returned to the corset at her Fall show this morning. It’s different this time around. “I wanted to look at my wardrobe and rework things,” she said.Beckham’s idea was to make the bustier appropriate for day. (Hey, women are wearing track pants around the clock, so why not?) She cut it in unexpected materials like Prince of Wales check with a bright waxed thread stitched through it and in thick, spongy houndstooth jacquards, both with cutouts sliced below the bustline. These fabrics aren’t necessarily designed to hug a woman’s curves, which is why when Beckham’s clients are shopping next fall—by then her new Hong Kong store should be open—they’re likely to be more turned on by the body-con ribbed knit pieces (solids and striped) that she layered over each other to achieve a similarly curvy effect.To balance that cling, she also experimented with volume, sending out bubble skirts and others that flared generously to below the knee over flat shoes. Outerwear was a strong suit. Reflecting the dichotomy at work elsewhere in the collection, softly structured clutch coats with fringe detailing at the hem shared the runway with more sartorially inclined, sharply tailored numbers in menswear checks. We expect to see a paparazzi snap of Beckham in the clutch coat imminently.
14 February 2016
Victoria Beckhamwas off the plane barely 12 hours and up most of the night putting herPre-Fallcollection together for an early-morning preview, at which she was perfectly put together in a fuchsia seersucker knit top and tube skirt from the new lineup and spiked suede heels. Beckham lives what she preaches about a functional, easy-to-layer wardrobe, and the brand has come a long way from the original wiggle dress. 2016 will bring a new Hong Kong boutique, and going forward she's looking at a full shoe range, and additional stores in places like New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles.This season finds her digging into texture and using gorgeous jewel-tone colors. Beyond the stretchy, puckered seersucker Beckham wore, there was a lush, dense knit that she used for a fitted slip dress and a peplumed tunic and trumpet skirt that made a chic alternative to the suit. As for those jewel tones, she used them for not only evening (a pair of plunge-front gowns in plisse silk georgette), but also for day, sometimes fearlessly combining them together, as in the case of an amethyst slip dress layered over a fine gauge ribbed knit turtleneck in a fiery orange. As much as she’s endorsing separates for Pre-Fall, she also knows the power of a good coat. She opened her mini-show with three of them, the most sensational in a particularly vivid shade of ultramarine blue.
7 December 2015
“I’m a sponge.” That might seem a very odd, existential quote to come from the mouth of the distinctly un-blob-likeVictoria Beckham, but she was using it as a figure of speech to account for the design ideas she put into her Spring collection—feelings she says she just picked up in passing on her nonstop travels with work and family. “I’ve lived in L.A., we have the show here in New York, and now obviously we’re back in London,” she said backstage, “so I guess I’ve figured it out from that. There are subliminal things in here, like the surf prints, but this collection is more about attitude and just making things fresh and carefree.”Perhaps the best way to judge Beckham’s fluid, just-above-the-ankle midi lengths, swing dresses, and flats is to compare them to what she was producing at the very beginning of her career as a designer, i.e., fitted hourglass silhouettes, tiny short dresses, and eveningwear, all with towering heels. That is now firmly a thing of the past. There was nothing on the runway that looked even remotely cocktail or red carpet in the old sense, but times have changed. Where there once might have been sculpted, corseted bustiers, now there is crinkled duchesse satin suspended from gathered necklines, and where once there had been stiletto platforms, here were backless loafers. The distance traveled can definitely be measured in a much more grown-up idea of what sophisticated fashion is to the kind of women who inhabit, or would like to move into, Victoria Beckham’s world. The clothes read as expensive, with a luxurious, creamy heft and swish about them, exuding a wealthy confidence that says, “I have achieved the perfect life, but I don’t need to try too hard to show that off to you.”
13 September 2015
Pre-collections aren't a new thing for Victoria Beckham. Resort 2016 is her fourth, but it's the first one she's opted to show to the press. "I feel like I know my customer now, what she wants from me," Beckham said, explaining why she thought this one was camera-ready. So camera-ready, in fact, that Beckham was papped at the airport over the weekend wearing a tunic-and-trousers combo from the collection in a red ribbon tweed. It was something of a personal departure for the designer, who tends to get photographed in skinny jeans or more formal fare. But the VB line keeps growing, so she has to keep on representing.Beyond that tunic-and-trousers set, the news for Resort included jeans made from premium Japanese raw denim in two cuts (note the special button at the fly), and experiments with sequins and lace. Of the two, the sequins were stronger, especially on a boxy shirt she tucked into straight-leg pants. Beckham also continues to push into such categories as outerwear and knits. Some of the coat shapes from Fall were recut in lighter materials, as was a successful asymmetrically draped dress. Asymmetry was one of her main themes. The collection-opening cape-coat hybrid buttoned diagonally up one shoulder, and cocktail dresses and gowns featured straps that were different from one side to another. Loose, boxy shapes were another big message, but Beckham will never be able to escape her signature body-con dress. You can call it a curse or you can call it a blessing, but that's what happens when you have such a big hit so early. As smart as the collection looked overall, it was probably hardest to resist a black wiggle dress with a trompe l'oeil white knit tee underneath.
3 June 2015
For Victoria Beckham, it all started with a dress. You know the one: sexy yet strict hourglass fit, suggestive zip up the back, otherwise covered up. In the years since she launched her namesake label, she has explored other avenues. Last season found her in very foreign territory; the boxy shapes of her masculine, military-influenced jackets didn't necessarily feel true to the VB brand. So she went back to the beginning for Fall '15. Said Beckham, "We started with dresses; we listened to what people said."Of course, fashion changes. Beckham pays attention, and along the way her own sensibility has shifted and become more sophisticated. Her new dresses reclaim some of the sexy ground she lost, but they do it in new-to-her, more avant-garde ways. Take the opening number, a clingy knit with a pair of big buttons below a deep V-neck and an evocative gather of fabric hitched to one hip. It just about wiggled. If the show had organizing principles, they were draping and asymmetry. Ribbed chenille tops twisted around the torso, and skirts wrapped and knotted like a corduroy sarong at the waist. A sleeveless mock turtleneck dress was pieced together from swatches of chenille, silk, and plissé like a three-dimensional puzzle.The other part of the story was outerwear, but where the dresses and separates were about accentuating the body, the coats were more about armoring it. Some came with stand-up collars and exaggerated storm flaps that buttoned in back; others had sculptural, pannier-like shapes at the hips. All of them made a strong statement, exactly what you want out of an investment piece. Beckham said she's been learning a lot from customers at her new Dover Street store in London. In this collection, it showed.
15 February 2015
Victoria Beckham is setting up shop on London's Dover Street; her first-ever store is scheduled to open later this month. Beckham has come a long way in nine seasons, from the hourglass dresses that launched her design career. For Spring, she's thinking about uniform dressing and the military connotations that the concept implies. Epaulets and patch pockets decorated outerwear. Contrast color leather belts that threaded into slits at the sides of coats and jackets felt like a callback of sorts to the internal grosgrain belts that famously gave her dresses their rigorous shape. The silhouette here was precise but not punishing. Single lapels on jute raincoats that zip up the opposite side flounced softly away from the shoulder line. Meanwhile, fine-gauge ribbed knit dresses and skirts that fell in a slight flare to the mid calf were cut close to the body without clinging. In the wake of last season's sweater explosion, we're predicting a big knitwear moment for Spring '15. Beckham made hers look new and extra desirable with lacing details up the front or down the sides.Everything was impeccably done—that's Victoria. But at times it also felt derivative, and it came at the expense of what was once her core message. As her brand has grown, Beckham has branched beyond the sexy, fitted dresses with which she made her first big splash. That's necessary and good, though not always easy. You couldn't fault the cool precision of this collection, but it did make you long for the days when she put a little wiggle on it.
7 September 2014
David Beckham and the four children he shares with his wife, Victoria, emerged from backstage moments before the lights went down at her show today. The Beckhams know how to make an entrance, don't they? Business is going well for Victoria Beckham. Last month she announced the brand will be opening its first store on London's Dover Street this fall, and a new New York office and showroom indicate that she's got her sights on a Manhattan location before too long.There was nice growth on the runway as well. Last season Beckham might've gone too far in the boyish direction for her client base. She made adjustments here, elongating the silhouette first and foremost, and adding femme touches to what was, all in all, a sharply tailored collection. A substantial gold chain replaced a button closure on a winter white cashmere coat, the back of which was sharply pleated in a lighter-weight silk, while a deep organza ruffle decorated the hem of a tunic sweatshirt. Prints made a comeback, and there was sparkle to spare on a midi-skirt worn with a cowl-neck knit.Speaking of entrance making, it was good to see Beckham redirect some of her attention to eveningwear. She reports that it's a top-selling category for the brand, and it was easy to see why in the case of a pleated black georgette goddess gown with an ivory cashmere camisole underneath. Cate Blanchett will in all likelihood wear Armani to the Oscars, but if not, we've found her dress.
8 February 2014
"Shape," Victoria Beckham pronounced before her show. When she launched her label five years ago, she was interested in the form of the body underneath the fabric, and presented dresses constructed to best highlight it. Clothes have been moving away from the body for the last couple of seasons. Beckham's early history as a designer makes her an unlikely proponent of the new look, but she made a believable case for herself today with rounded jackets; ruffle-hem, A-line tunics; and full, cropped trousers that were clean and sharp. The midi-skirts she did last season were replaced by apron minis, the diagonal hem on top revealing a spray of pleats below. Leggy!If "cling" was her mantra way back when, now "crisp" is a more apt description. The collection was super-graphic and sporty—mostly black, white, and icy gray, with shots of fuchsia and brick red. Visual interest came courtesy of double-crepe triangles bonded to the organza base of button-downs and sleeveless tops. Elsewhere, she embellished a short-sleeve shirt with large overlapping rectangles of color. There were body-conscious harness dresses in the mix. They'll be snapped up by her fans. But it was the boyish tailoring of the cropped pants and the boxy tunics and vests that pushed the Victoria Beckham story forward.
7 September 2013
Once upon a time, Victoria Beckham would've been the last designer you'd expect to embrace menswear. But coming up on the fifth anniversary of her business, she's more than just a resource for a sexy, skintight frock. Come July, when Fall collections land in stores, hers will be a name to keep in mind for great coats. To convey that point, she put them at the beginning of her show this morning at the New York Public Library. The best came in a checked tweed on top and Yves Klein blue pony hair below the hips, but she also showed one in a simpler allover plaid for traditionalists. YSL-inspired smokings, meanwhile, were already prevalent on the Spring runways, but Beckham made a strong case for hers, cutting it with capelike slit sleeves. And when she reinterpreted that smoking as a coat, she put it in the running for best black-tie look of the week.Among the other developments, Beckham is feeling for color—not just indigo but also sunny yellow. A color-blocked intarsia turtleneck in yellow and black was her first crack at knitwear. The real surprise here, though, was her embrace of longer lengths. "I like to ask myself how would I wear something, then I turn it on its head," she said, alluding to the fact that more often than not she's in an above-the-knee skirt herself. Truth is, longer lengths are happening elsewhere, but that doesn't diminish the appeal of the cement gray felt number she showed with a taupe silk blouse and Manolo Blahnik-designed kitten-heel booties. All in all, a convincing evolution of the VB brand.
9 February 2013
Victoria Beckham has been spending a lot of time with her customers, and trunk shows on three different continents this summer (Asia, North America, and Europe, in case you were wondering) taught her something. Women can't live on super-fitted sheath dresses alone. Beckham's ladies have been asking for separates and suits, and for Spring she's giving 'em to them."I wanted to take my aesthetic and find a new way of working it," she said before the show. The Manolo Blahnik-designed flat sandals and monk-strap men's shoes that the models wore may have felt like a grand departure (VB is strictly a heels girl herself), but otherwise this was a subtle evolution. The same rules that have always applied still apply: solid colors, no prints; athletic cuts; and fabrics with a dry, almost crisp feel, like canvas, georgette, chiffon, and lace—sometimes all in one dress. Although she did include a few silk blouses and midi-length skirts with a bit more breathing room, more typical of her new offerings was a white button-down with graphic lace sleeves that topped a sunset orange A-line miniskirt as body-loving as anything Alaïa has ever done. The gals who requested more tailoring won't be disappointed, either. Beckham poured all the sexiness of her signature dresses into a pair of high-waisted stovepipe-skinny trousers, and its matching single-breasted jacket looked sharp, too.With her business turning four years old, it was a smart time to diversify—the fashion set is notorious for boring easily. Still, the highlights here were those sheath dresses, this time around with lace insets or sheer ribbed bodices that put built-in bra cups and straps on display.
8 September 2012
"I'm not pregnant anymore; these are the dresses I want to wear now," said Victoria Beckham after her excellent show today. The former pop star is so petite and in such great form you'd never guess she's had four babies. The models on the runway showed off equally trim mid-sections, but Beckham opted out of using the corsets that were an early hallmark of her label in favor of dense rib jerseys, canvases, and quilting techniques that suck it all in with the same power as old-fashioned boning and lacing.The silhouette was familiar: long and as lean as you can get. But the collection's look was sportier, with contrast polo collars at the neckline of some dresses and bold stripes encircling the torso of V-neck styles. You can chalk up the new sensibility to her son Romeo's baseball outfits, Beckham explained. Toward the end of the show's 22 looks, a few shorter frocks with flippy cheerleader skirts marched out on flat ankle boots. It'd be a surprise to see the designer stomping around in that footwear, for sure, but the dresses' appealing, everyday ease felt of a piece with Beckham's elegant, sophisticated signature. A great-looking coat in olive green with black python collars and lapels was an argument for more outerwear next time around.With the Oscars coming up later this month, choosing not to include any long evening dresses seemed like a missed opportunity. One possible explanation? Maybe she's working on something exclusive for Hollywood's big night.
11 February 2012
A bell gonged as guests shuffled around before Victoria Beckham's show, and the crowd hushed to observe a moment of silence in honor of the September 11 victims. Fashion marches relentlessly on. VB was still Posh Spice ten years ago; her rapidly expanding clothing and accessory brand not yet in its infancy. Today was her first full-scale runway show, but she's hardly a beginner.Beckham wasted no time establishing her signature: hourglass dresses as rigorously constructed on the inside as they are streamlined on the outside. Season by season, in perfectionist fashion, she's added new elements: volume, print, embroideries, a bag range, and now, for Spring, a timely new interest in utility and sport.The stretchy hourglass dresses are still here, still ridiculously sexy, but now they have sturdy, buff-gray nylon straps and D-rings—even the long, evening version. Joining them on the catwalk at the New York Public Library were short, easy shifts, some inset with a horizontal stripe of sheer mesh, worn with what had to be VB's first-ever flat sandal. Has having her fourth baby inspired this more practical bent? Could be: Outerwear, though cut in double-faced satin, was on the boxy side with sporty rolled sleeves and hoods. And soft shoulder bags and oversize totes are now in the mix alongside her signature constructed frame bags.But what's life without a little glamour? The wide bands of navy and safety orange on a clingy sheath prove you can still depend on Beckham for exactly that.
10 September 2011
Victoria Beckham is pregnant with her fourth child, but she says she finished her Fall collection before she found out. The fact that she loosened up her silhouette more than ever before, and pushed the draping, is merely sweet synchronicity. Mixed in among her signature body-loving hourglass dresses (this season in bright shades of saffron, magenta, and vermilion, and featuring curving seams that shape the torso) were a pair of blouson minidresses, one in an iridescent honeycomb jacquard and another in a kingfisher blue matte gazar. Their cocooning shapes will be a boon as her baby bump grows. Continuing in the relaxed vein, she showed a few outfits that looked like draped cashmere shawls belted over fitted pencil skirts. But it was an illusion: They were in fact trompe l'oeil dresses, and great-looking too.Also new for Fall were coats. But whereas elsewhere she was thinking loose and liberating, here she was all rigor and precision. The toppers were cut in structured wool, and their stand-up buckled collars notwithstanding, they were the opposite of tricked-out. Amid all the utilitarian parkas we'll be seeing on selling floors come fall, they'll look practically stately. That's fine with Beckham, for whom the classics have always trumped the trends.What will she do for an encore next season? Pantsuits, maybe? After this first shot at tailoring, they seem like the next logical step for a designer who, ironically, given her celebrity status, pays closer attention to her clients' real-life needs than many of her peers. It's an approach that continues to pay dividends.
12 February 2011
Only one dress out of the 26 Victoria Beckham showed today featured a corset. That's groundbreaking news for a glamour puss who looks so pulled together in paparazzi snapshots you'd swear she wears a waist cincher to the gym. But as Beckham said while narrating the collection, her own style has loosened up quite a bit, and it showed in the clothes. She opened with a draped parachute silk dress in ultraviolet knotted at the torso, and included a few more variations of the theme, including a striking gown in black with jet embroidery at the shoulder. Kudos for expanding the range, though the irony is a weightless fabric like parachute silk hides nothing; as easy as the new silhouettes are, they require a flawless body.Hollywood is full of those, of course, but Beckham's fans—even those with last names like Diaz, Lopez, and Moore—will probably gravitate toward the curving seams of the hourglass dresses she's best known for. Hard not to like the way they reliably hold everything in place. Among the best examples today: a shoulder-baring iridescent jacquard with ribbon straps and a Cadillac pink double crepe with an asymmetric neckline and a contrasting zipper in back. At the designer's request, Brian Atwood made the show's rose gold platform pumps to match her new Rolex. As for the new Victoria Beckham bags, they featured luxe materials and classically ladylike shapes, as befits a lady who knows her way around a Birkin.
11 September 2010
Victoria Beckham started her presentation by personally greeting each and every one of the 25 or so editors and retailers assembled in the Upper East Side town house to see it. Most designers, of course, prefer to hide out backstage. "When does that ever happen?" someone asked after shaking hands with her. As has become Beckham's style over the last three seasons, she narrated as the models glided out in her dresses, discussing fabrics, color, cut, and construction. She sounded like such a pro, you almost forgot that she was once a pop superstar, until, pointing out a buff-colored draped silk jersey gown with a grosgrain ribbon sashed around the asymmetrical bodice, she told us, "I'm going to wear this one to the Oscars." A cloudlike gazar confection with couture-esque hand-tucking and a blurred pixel print lifted from the Dick Tracy comic came with another anecdote, this one about what a nightmare it was to put together.Well, all the hard work paid off; there wasn't one bad dress in the bunch. The best of her signature hourglass sheaths came in a brilliant emerald stretch felt for day, and for evening in an antique gold metallic jacquard with an asymmetrical neckline. Where she pushed herself was with draping and looser-fitting shape—relatively speaking, of course. A strapless sapphire double-crepe column gown with a tuck at the bust and a draped back was as Martha Graham as things got. More often Beckham married the fluid with the structured, as she did with one fabulous dress that was nude silk jersey on top and densely ribbed nude jersey below the waist. The most exciting development, though, was a wool crepe long-sleeve tunic dress. Cut on the bias so that it felt like wearing an oversize sweater—or so Beckham described it—the frock had an everyday kind of sexiness that will win her a whole new class of fans.
13 February 2010
Feeling her way toward a full-scale catwalk production sometime in the not-so-distant future, Victoria Beckham graduated from one-on-one appointments to a small, informal runway show that she narrated look by look. The collection itself has progressed, too. A girl, after all, cannot live in fits-like-a-glove sheaths alone."I wanted to push myself," Beckham said, "to play with new silhouettes, textures, and print." The newness came via two double-crepe dresses with paneled shoulders and wide skirts, a couple of otherwise streamlined minidresses with peplums flaring from waist to hips, and a strapless cocktail number that looked as if the model had wrapped herself loosely in a bedsheet that might slip off at any second (if not, Beckham explained, for an inner corset structure). The collection felt alternately more girly, more fashion-forward, and more laid-back than before—but always with its designer's signature sex appeal.The showstoppers—no surprise—were the evening dresses, impossibly long and narrow columns with contrasting bands of fabric at the waist that enhanced their slimming effects. When Beckham does want to join the big-timers on the runway, she'll probably need to expand further into daywear, but three seasons in, she's certainly established herself as a red-carpet expert.
12 September 2009
Quite possibly the only person who hasn't been surprised by the success of Victoria Beckham's new dress line is the celebrity designer herself. Back at the Waldorf Towers, where she's showing her 23-piece sophomore collection by appointment, she spoke just as earnestly about under-bust contouring, channel seaming, and zippers that unzip from top and bottom as she did last September. But these dresses look so well-made, so of-the-moment yet also timeless ("which is so important, especially these days," Beckham acknowledged) that they do the talking for her. The fits-like-a-glove sheath made a reappearance, this time in soft gray cashmere with little cap sleeves. New to the mix were short day dresses in black stretch wool felt, above-the-knee cocktail numbers in gold tinsel bouclé, and gowns in crepe or matte sequins with elegant trains. (Capes in felt or silk gazar were also a new category for Beckham, but they didn't quite have the need-it-now quality of her frocks.) The one-shoulder floor-grazing black gown with chenille and metallic details, or maybe the long-sleeved red marocain with grosgrain belt, should get shipped out to L.A., and quickly. The latter's padded shoulders and corseted waist could work their elongating, slimming magic on some lucky star come Oscar night.
14 February 2009
The woman formerly known as Posh Spice has launched a dress collection, and, believe it or not, it's one of the hottest things going in New York this week. It should come as no surprise that Victoria Beckham is an entrepreneur to be taken seriously; she's already launched dVb denim and sunglasses, and her fragrance, which was previously unavailable here, is soon headed to the States. But her sheaths and shift dresses, which we're told several major retailers are vying to offer exclusively, will sell not on the power of her name but on the sophistication of their cut and fit.Every one of them could've been pulled from Beckham's own closet. The silhouette is beyond body-conscious, ultra-fitted from shoulder line to below the knee, with special seams along the derriere and torso to ensure against flat rear ends and busts, respectively. And each comes with woman-friendly details like a rose-gold back zipper ("so you don't have to dive into it and mess your hair and makeup") and a removable grosgrain ribbon lining the waist ("for posture"). If the collection owes a debt to anyone, it's Roland Mouret, whose Galaxy dress gave curves to even the most skeletal of celebrities, or maybe Dolce & Gabbana. But Beckham denies the inspiration. "This has been a lifetime in the making," she said, adding that she's been wearing the best designers in the world for about as long. And she's not interested in making an It dress. "I don't want to make dresses that will date. I've always been about clever buying." The dresses will range from $1,500 to $3,600.
7 September 2008