The girl from Goff’s Oak in Hertfordshire has certainly come a long way from her early declaration of wanting to be as famous as Daz Automatic. This year is turning out to be somewhat of a landmark for Victoria Beckham. Thirty years after the Spice Girls formed, 25 after she married a footballer called David, the industrious mother of four is heading into her sixth decade in rather triumphant style.
Her eponymous fashion label — a healthy 16 years old, even hit profit. In 2022 its revenue rose 44 per cent to £58.8 million, which isn’t bad for someone who on leaving the Spice Girls thought it was a good idea to team up with songwriter Dane Bowers.
Out of her mind? Perhaps, but Beckham has always admirably chartered her own course, which might have made it easy for some to sneer. But looking over her back catalogue you can’t deny her Midas touch. She has been resolutely entertaining us ever since she marked out her metier as Posh, the one who pointed, po-faced in a chic little black Gucci (Tom Ford era) dress.
Last year’s Netflix documentary, ostensibly David’s project, was hard to watch without getting misty eyed over these titans of British popular culture, who worked hard and got dressed harder; who’s every life move and outfit we’ve opined and obsessed over, taunted and teased but ultimately adored.
Beckham, of course, delivered all the best moments but it was David sending up her declaration that she came from a working-class background that made the viral meme moment of the series. Ever the entrepreneur, you can now purchase slogan T-shirts in her store emblazoned with both “David’s Wife” and, of course, “My Dad Had a Rolls-Royce” (yours for a not too frightening £110 at victoriabeckham.com).
Her sense of humour has never hovered far from the surface and there’s always been the feeling that there’s a wink behind all she does. The blonde LA Pob Posh — resplendent in Barbie pink, (years before Margot Robbie slipped down her plastic slide) Roland Mouret with co-ordinating Hermès Birkin bag (she is rumoured to have more than 100 of the haute It bags which could be worth £2 million) was pure tabloid tease.
At that point, in fashion terms, her stock was low. The Baden-Baden Wag-era looks left an eye-rolling mark over the industry; her earliest efforts at establishing herself as a style force came via licensed collaborations which edged on tacky —diamanté jeans from Rock and Republic, oversized sunglasses and pungent celebrity perfume. But with her keen sense of knowing, she understood more about the fashion industry than it perhaps realised at the time.
While she may have somewhat abandoned her pop star accoutrements (there is a rumoured Spice Girls reunion happening later this year, but details are so far scant) she has taken the lesson set by Madonna et al to heart — that constant reinvention is the key to longevity.
Beckham’s eras have happily gone from Hertfordshire’s plucky finest to Old Trafford, from flouncy boho in Madrid to Hollywood gloss in LA. Now happily settled somewhere between west London, legging-clad-mum, country casuals in the Cotswolds to leaning into the flash in Miami, she is nothing if not versatile (she’s even taken to wearing flat shoes).
Her first step to scrubbing off the terraces was to shrewdly team up with Marc Jacobs, sending herself up by sitting in one of his carrier bags in a campaign shot by Juergen Teller. It was a genius move, a christening of cool. When she came to launch her label in 2008 — hair back to brunette — it was almost as an act of contrition. She humbly presented 10 dresses to small groups of fashion journalists at New York’s Waldorf Astoria. The editors came away with disarming news — they liked what they saw.
From its inception, the line had accusations of copycat designs. Beckham had been a demonstrative fan of Roland Mouret — then king of the bodycon Galaxy dress. There were murmurs he was behind the dresses, which followed a similar aesthetic. In reality, Mouret wasn’t involved but Beckham had hired two women from his atelier. Speaking in 2016, she said: “I’m very thankful to Roland. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have met Mel or Tracy, but he’s never had anything to do with the collections. I knew what everyone was thinking and what the whispers were. Of course I knew.”
Beckham’s attitude towards the fashion press has always been open. She is no snob. Her small presentations in New York slowly graduated to full shows where the Beckham clan sat front row. Prior to each one she would (and still does) host previews where journalists on tight deadlines were talked through the collection by Beckham herself, often one-on-one.
Her skill is understanding just how much family to give versus collection detail. In the early days there was often a flash of her iPhone showing pictures from their summer holidays, always just enough to satiate the demands of news desks after a line. She made sure she remembered you season to season, remarking on a new haircut or shoe.
When I interviewed her at her Holland Park home she was warm and welcoming, but as with anything Beckham-led there’s always a sense of yes but no. Are you being played? I walked into the kitchen to VB and her then PR sat with a mug of tea each, one monikered V the other B. She daintily ate a bowl of pomegranate seeds while we chatted, a tin full of custard creams studiously ignored until Harper scooted in after a piano lesson to grab a couple. Her mother fruitlessly brandished a banana at her. There was just enough juice there to make a good piece — that semblance of this being just another normal family on a week-day afternoon except that later that day Beckham was flying off to Ethiopia with the UN.
By the time she opened her three-floor Dover Street Store in 2014 — designed by Farshid Moussavi with a Damien Hirst in the personal shopping area — she had cemented her role at the heart of the fashion industry, and snapped up two British Fashion Awards for best brand (in 2011 and 2014). She might have stumbled out of the opening party, but everyone loved her for it. Her confidence led her to bring her show to London Fashion Week before post-pandemic moving on again to Paris, where she has settled into showing at Karl Lagerfeld’s opulent old town house on the Left Bank.
While the company has historically languished in the red, its recent business plan is winning; stripping back to one collection at a reduced price point alongside her successful beauty off-shoot with Mrs B’s TikTok breaking how-to-eyeliner videos. One thing that has never waned is its central focus riffing off from its founder — who is involved at all levels.
Her most recent show in Paris was a perfect assertion of her doggedness in pursuit of pure fabulous glamour —would a Peta invasion or unsightly black medi-boot (the result of a broken foot in a gym injury) stop Beckham from taking her full catwalk bow? It very much would not.
Ever the egalitarian, next week her first high street collaboration with Mango will drop to no doubt sell-out acclaim. Speaking to French Vogue last year she said: “When I look at big houses, I get stars in my eyes. Creating a big house is my dream. I won’t name any, at the risk of coming across as arrogant, but I would like to highlight, as humbly as possible, that I have lots of ambitions.”
There is a palpable sense that at 50, Beckham is just getting going.
