Look who’s POSH ENOUGH FOR MUM!
...as seen in the uncanny copycat pictures showing why Brooklyn Beckham’s new model girlfriend is such a hit with the family
AS EVERY woman knows, getting on the right side of a new boyfriend’s mother is a crucial step in any relationship.
Full points, then, to Hana Cross, Brooklyn Beckham’s girlfriend of five months, who is getting on famously with Victoria. So much so, that the pair seem to be turning into style sisters.
There’s an extraordinary similarity about the hair, the pout and the clothes. No wonder everyone who knows the Beckhams remarks on how well Brooklyn’s girlfriend is fitting in.
The 22-year-old Yorkshire-born model has quickly become an indispensable part of the family, sitting with them on the front row of Spice Girl-turned-fashion designer Victoria’s shows and often wearing clothes from her range.
By eagerly embracing Victoria as a fashion mentor and championing her brand, Hana has found a path straight to her heart.
The pair enjoy the same mannish tailoring in monochrome. They love an all-white suit, a classic tux or a white T-shirt and black trousers. They also have the knack of looking thoroughly miserable and of draping themselves, territorially, over their men.
She was the only non-family member sitting around the table with the designer at her birthday celebrations in LA last week.
‘We talk about everything,’ Hana tells this month’s Tatler magazine, adding that Victoria was going to ‘style’ her for the festival Coachella. In the event, she wore a bra and denim shorts.
She posted a sweet picture in which she was embracing Brooklyn’s younger brother Cruz, 14. It was captioned ‘Lil bro’, and she gushed her love for his sister Harper, seven, too.
Hana and Brooklyn, 20, are in the first flush of love. They spent Valentine’s Day in Paris.
Brooklyn shared a picture of the couple at the Eiffel Tower with the caption: ‘Me and my girl. Luckiest man in the world. Love you baby.’ Hana followed suit, writing: ‘Thank you for making me the happiest girl in the world. I love you! Happy Valentine’s Day xx.’
They probably met through the fashion business: he is a budding fashion photographer, having dropped out of a course at the renowned Parsons School of Design in New York; she has been modelling for five years and won a competition run by the cheap-and-cheerful clothes store New Look. Since then, her star has risen exponentially, with friendships formed with influential figures, including British Vogue boss Edward Enninful. She is on the books of three agencies, including the noted Select in London. She has done campaigns for Topshop, Nasty Gal and ASoS but is now being talked about as a ‘supermode-lone admiring profile in Glamour magazine (pre-Brooklyn) noted that Hana had ‘arguably the best brows in Britain’. She has 250,000 followers on Instagram.
So who is this up-and- coming
young woman? Well, she was born Hana Mahmood in Leeds. It seems her early life was a long way from the Beckhams’ starry, moneyed orbit.
Her mother, Sarah (nee Clamp), is the daughter of a retired salesman. Sarah was working as a shop manager when she married Khalid Mahmood in November 1994.
On the wedding certificate, Khalid, then 37 and divorced, gives his occupation as ‘shop proprietor’.
At the time of the wedding, he and Sarah were living together in Leeds in a modest three-bedroom house. They then moved to Huddersfield. As a young girl, daughter Hana attended the private Mount School in the town.
Later the family — including older brother Haris — moved to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, where Hana went to the local state school from 2012 to 2016. She left after GCSEs, it seems to pursue dreams of modelling stardom, adopting the surname Cross, which seems to have come from her mother’s side of the family.
This week, Sarah told the Mail that she would rather not talk about her daughter as they are a ‘private family’.
By the time she turned 21, Hana was a big enough noise to throw a birthday party in a private room at Soho House. A few months later, she and Brooklyn became an item — she was at the Beckhams’ Cotswolds farmhouse hanging out with their famous friends over Christmas and New Year.
She is Instagram pals with the wider Beckham bunch, including Gordon Ramsay’s children and actress Liv Tyler, wife of David’s best mate Dave Gardner. Hana’s rather showbiz new lifestyle involves attending Victoria’s shows in London, fashion events in New York and family launches in London and elsewhere.
She went with the Beckham children — and their security team — to Coachella earlier this month, and she and Brooklyn have one wing of Victoria and David’s three adjoining barns conversion in the Cotswolds. They are now also said to be living part-time in the old staff quarters at the Beckhams’ house in West London.
WHAT has propelled Hana into the heart of one of the wealthiest families in Britain is her very striking beauty: her perfect bone structure, impressive pout and vivid green eyes.
She says that if she ever has a ‘down day’, she uses the mantra: ‘I am loved, I love my job and tomorrow is another day.’
But the course of true love for her and Brooklyn has not always been smooth.
They were first spotted together in December 2018 at the British Fashion Awards after-party. But in March they had a bust-up after going to watch the rock musician Yungblud perform in North London. A witness said: ‘Brooklyn had sunk a few beers and ended up getting into a row with Hana. It had been a bit of a wild night out and it got a bit messy.
‘Brooklyn ended up storming into the street. Hana read him the Riot Act and told him she didn’t like it when he was acting up and drinking too much.’
Earlier this week they were spotted having what seemed to be a tearful conversation in Brooklyn’s car outside an LA restaurant. A few days previously there had been another apparent row outside a restaurant, with Brooklyn’s brother Romeo, 16, putting his hand on her shoulder to try to calm things down.
But when it comes to official family events, the Beckhams seem to be benefiting from having a professional model in the family.
She’s worn Beckham designs to a number of events, including David’s Kent & Curwen (the clothing label he co-owns) fashion show in London, and Victoria’s London Fashion Week show. In February, she was at the launch of Victoria’s Reebok collaboration in New York.
And she seems to be in the habit of ‘wearing Beckham’ even when she’s not at Beckham events.
As Victoria noted: ‘@hancross looking great at the @britishgq car awards in my #VBPreSS19 camo jacket, chain tee and my fave leather pants, x VB.’
Victoria’s fashion business is still struggling to make headway 11 years after it was founded, reporting heavy losses.
While Hana is still a relative minnow on social media, she is developing a knack of gaining media attention for wearing Victoria’s clothes — which can only be a good thing for both of them.
Surely it’s enough to provoke one of Victoria’s rare smiles.
And as this middle-class girl from Leeds moves in circles her friends back home could only dream of, Hana has plenty to smile about, too.