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Evening Standard

Lifestyle

Joe Bromley

Victoria Beckham: Her complete style evolution in 50 iconic looks

Victoria Beckham Dave Benett David Beckham London Becks Cheryl Tweedy Emma Bunton Marc Jacobs (Person) Meghan Markle Naomi Campbell

Victoria Beckham is finally getting her own documentary — a woman who has enjoyed more eras than Taylor Swift and captured minds and hearts regardless of her hairstyle, which over the decades has morphed from perma straight to tumbling WAG extensions, the bleach blond ‘pob’ (Posh bob) and into to her current fashion mogul, blow-dried brunette locks.

From the young, zig-a-zig-ah Ms Adams Britain met in the mid-nineties as Posh Spice (when the dresses came tight, black and slashed), it was out of the pan and into the fire as she joined her football beau David in a flurry of era-defining, double-trouble outfits — from their matching leathers at the 1999 Versace Club party in London, to all-white everything ensembles for 2003’s MTV Movie Awards; Halloween looks for time eternal, naturally.

With David Beckham at the MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles on May 31, 2003 (Getty Images)

A premonition of her catwalk destiny came in 2000, when she made her runway debut during Maria Grachvogel’s show — small step for Becks, huge step for London Fashion Week, etc. Lurid coloured, uber-cinched Roberto Cavalli gowns came in the years that followed — “I’ll go in a horsebox standing up if I have to – I want it tighter!” she told the late Italian designer, during in fittings for her Ming-vase inspired dress for the white tie and tiara ball in Elton John’s Windsor back garden in 2005 — as she settled contently into WAG-hood, Cheryl Tweedy in tow. Think: tan, tiny shorts, a great white Birkin and the odd gasp from the bleachers. Go, England!

With Cheryl Tweedy at the World Cup held in Germany on June 15, 2006 (Getty Images)

Following what can only be described as a fever pitch moment in 2007 — a whole 16 years before Margot Robbie came on the scene, Becks gave her best Barbiecore on a sports pitch in LA — the following year saw her follow her inner entrepreneur and launch an eponymous fashion label. She enthusiastically booted all things naff to curb in favour of black silk slips, roomy jumpsuits and the odd slick tux and a front row scowl (”I'm smiling on the inside. I feel I have a responsibility to the fashion community,” she would later tell Vogue). In 2014 she swept up Brand of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, and by 2018 had officially completed chic rehab, looking every inch a national treasure strutting it up to watch Prince Harry and Meghan get hitched at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle that May.

At her autumn winter 2024 fashion show in Paris on March 1, 2024 (AFP via Getty Images)

This brings us to her half century, which she celebrated earlier this year with a broken foot — but you better believe crutches aren’t enough to stop her. In fact, after hobbling out in a black pair to bow after her Paris Fashion Week collection this March, they enjoyed a 70 per cent sales boom. VB, a perennial arbiter of style. We can’t wait for what Netflix has in store for her — and us.