The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
‘I’VE LEARNT TO EXPRESS MYSELF IN A DIFFERENT WAY’
THE EVOLUTION OF VICTORIA BECKHAM
on a sweeping street in west London sits casa Beckham, a 19th-century, double-fronted, prettily whitewashed wedding cake of a house. After I’m buzzed through the waist-high gate, the front door swings open. I look through the tall, wide, elegantly decorated (lots of cream) hallway into the lounge straight ahead. In a perfectly assembled scenario, a grand piano takes up most of the vista. Sitting at it with her back to me and listening attentively to her teacher is the youngest member of the family, four-year-old Harper, wearing a red gingham school dress.
I am led into the kitchen, with its down-to-earth wood-covered cupboards and the family’s new dog, Olive, whimpering a little from her bed in the corner, to where Victoria Beckham sits, with her PR, Natalie, at a glass table by the window, as unassuming as anyone you might pop round to have tea with of an afternoon. On the table are more things that seem so perfectly placed I feel that by mentioning them I am falling in to a predictable trap, but here we are: two mugs full of tea sit side by side, one with a ‘V’, on the other a ‘B’, next to them a jar full of custard creams, in front of Beckham a breakfast bowl full of pomegranate seeds which she daintily spoons into her mouth.
She is dressed in a tracksuit, a Tommy Hilfger round-neck grey sweatshirt and matching bottoms, her hair down, make-up scant, though her giant Chopard yellow diamond
ring is sloping to the side of her wedding fnger. She looks fresh-faced and younger than her 41 years, and speaks deliberately and thoughtfully, sometimes repeating herself for emphasis. ‘We’re in here because Harper’s having her piano lesson,’ Beckham tells me of her daughter, who has recently added this to her other accomplishments of tennis and ballet. Everything feels very normal, very average, very what any mother of four might be doing at 1pm on a weekday. In a couple of hours she will go to pick up the boys (Brooklyn, 16, Romeo, 13, Cruz, 10) from school, come home, sort out their dinner, put them to bed and then fy to Ethiopia with the UN. Almost normal, then.
Beckham grew up in Hertfordshire as Victoria Adams, the eldest of three children. Her parents ran an electronics wholesale business successfully enough to allow them to indulge in the Rolls-Royce that a young Victoria would ask her father to park around the corner from her school to avoid embarrassment. An aspiring dancer, she left school at 17 to attend Laine Theatre Arts, a college in Epsom, Surrey. After three years there she replied to an ad in The Stage, which led to her place in a new pop group called the Spice Girls. Together they would go on to sell more than 55 million records worldwide.
After a trip to a charity football match in 1997 (with fellow Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm) she met a 22-year-old player called David Beckham. Within two years they had had their frst child, Brooklyn, and were married. After the wrapping up of Spice Girl business in 2000 (there have been two ‘reunions’ a world tour in 2007/8 and an appearance at the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012), Beckham started to show her mettle. Following a brief, perhaps ill-advised attempt at solo pop stardom, the Beckham brand materialised. She launched licensing deals with denim and sunglasses companies (now dissolved – these days everything she produces she owns), and began to reinvent herself, dropping the ostentatious Wag looks, appearing in Marc Jacobs’ ad campaigns and carefully courting the style cognoscenti. It worked. She is now the head of an impressively successful business.
Her eight-year-old eponymous fashion label employs 150 at its studio and two atelier spaces in London (there is also an ofce in New York). It has scooped her two British Fashion Awards (and a third nomination at this year’s forthcoming ceremony, for designer of the year) as well as achieving a turnover of more than £30 million for 2013 (in 2014 the business grew a further 30 per cent). Her three-foor store on Dover Street had its frst birthday in September.
To celebrate she threw the closing party of London Fashion Week, commissioning the artist Martin Creed to create a one-of installation. He flled the space with balloons so guests had to fnd their way through to get to dinner (‘I wanted to release them outside,’ she says, ‘but he had them all popped’). She invited friends and important industry supporters. She moved around the tables, kneeling down to greet each guest at their seat to thank them for their support. ‘People say [fashion] is a horrible, cut-throat industry, [but] I have had a very nice experience and I think, why is that? It’s not about me as a celebrity. The product is good. The quality is good. The sell-through is good.’
To some she will always be fair celebrity game, no matter how classy, how thoughtful, how curated an event might be. The loudest message in the tabloids the following day came from an unflattering photograph of her being guided out of the store by her husband. She laughs gamely, ‘I had a lot of fun at that party. The hangover wasn’t great, but I hadn’t had as much to drink as it possibly looked.’
That aside, the rebranding of this Spice Girl into a respected woman of fashion has been along a carefully navigated route, and crucially it has persuaded those in the know that she is a relevant force, not because of who she is but because of what she makes. Her clothes sell. Anita Barr, Harvey Nichols’ buying director, says, ‘We’ve experienced a huge appetite for the label season after season, and the growth for both her mainline and the Victoria, Victoria Beckham diffusion line isn’t slowing down. The cuts of her pieces suit a number of shapes and sizes and this has made her label one of the most desirable in the business.’
Beckham herself speaks diligently of her label, using niche fashion-business phrases. There is talk of ‘wardrobe’ (pieces beyond the signature figure-fattering dresses with which she launched the
‘I had a lot of fun at that party. The hangover wasn’t great, but
I hadn’t had as much to drink as it possibly looked’
brand), having ‘a point of view’ and the ‘fashion message’. The brand covers her mainline collection (which is shown at New York Fashion Week), the little sister label, Victoria, Victoria Beckham (VVB) as well as eyewear and accessories (mostly handbags; shoes are the next big project). This month’s launch of her latest pre-collection will see the ofcial merging of VVB with her existing denim line. ‘A few retailers had suggested the merging of the two,’ she explains, ‘and the more we thought about it the more we thought it made perfect sense to make VVB more of a lifestyle brand. We’ll see what the customer thinks. I’m really excited about it.’
Pre-collections are crucial as they sit in store all year round (‘resort’ from now until the sales in June, then the ‘pre-fall’ collection will come in and be on the foor until October), with the headlining winter and spring collections providing the frisson in between. These pre-collections ofer designers a way to create more basic separates and ‘pieces that a woman wants and needs in her wardrobe. But there’s still a strong fashion message,’ she says. Of the two lines, she explains that ‘they are both me. They’re diferent sides to my wardrobe. VVB is playful, there is a sense of humour as well as fun conversational prints. It is priced beneath ready to wear [the main line], and that enables a diferent customer to come on board.’
The current resort VVB collection has a charming circus theme running through it – sweet black cocktail dresses have vibrant blue and orange swirling hem detail, the pieces are cut wide, with firty peplum shapes as well as a strikingly structured circustent printed dress. There are more separates – great shirting with cute bow-front detailing on the waist, and neat indigo jeans. Priced from £175 to £1,495, VVB is more accessible than her main line, which runs between £490 and £3,120, but those who are still left out can be cheered that in the future she would ‘like to work with a high-street brand to ofer designer clothes to women who either can’t aford them or don’t want to pay designer prices, so I can reach out to women all around the world, no matter what their budget.’ A beauty line is also something she has on her list to ‘go into at some point’.
Early next year a second store in Hong Kong will open, and she is looking at spaces in Dubai, New York and Miami. She repeatedly points out, ‘I have a great team of people who work with me. I’m not doing this on my own.’ The collections have developed in style and confdence since her intimate debut of 10 dresses (which instantly sold out), and while there are tops and bottoms and roomier pieces, and a more relaxed silhouette, everything is still rooted in Beckham’s own taste.
‘I think we have grown in confdence,’ she says. ‘I dress diferently now to how I did then. I wear
‘David and I are never away at the
same time. It’s a juggling act, but we have great people around
us to make sure it all works’
looser dresses, fat shoes. I can express myself in a diferent way. I want to evolve each season. I never want to be one of those brands where people know what they’re going to see. I always want an element of surprise. One thing I never want to do is copy what anybody else is doing. I have a signature, and it’s very important to me to stay true to that.’
She still works with the two founding members of the VB team – her head of collections, Melanie Clark (currently on maternity leave), and head of sourcing, Tracy Lowe. Roland Mouret – via their mutual manager, Simon Fuller – introduced Beckham to Clark, who had previously worked for him. This set of rumours that Mouret was ghostdesigning the line for her. ‘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,’ Beckham says. ‘I knew what everyone was thinking and what the whispers were, of course I knew.’
Does she read her reviews? ‘I read absolutely everything,’ she says, looking me directly in the eye (I wrote her last – complimentary – show review for this newspaper). ‘I [read them] as soon as they come in, so I am very aware. I think people who say they don’t read everything are probably lying, people who say they don’t care are probably lying. There’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism, and I learn from that and better myself. I’m not expecting anyone to be sycophantic in any way, I never expected that.’
After her recent spring/summer 2016 show in New York there was a clatter about the size of the models, much of which focused on 17-year-old Peyton Knight. Knight endured particularly cruel comments on both Beckham’s and her own social media channels. ‘I wasn’t the only show she did, I wasn’t the only designer to use her,’ Beckham says. ‘Our casting director spoke to the [model] agencies, and we know that all our girls are healthy. They’re young, they’re thin, but that doesn’t mean they’re ill. People are mean on social media, whoever you are. It’s a shame people have to be that way.’
Her work ethic, for someone who is reportedly richer than the Queen, is impressive. She gets up at six every day and works out for an hour and 40 minutes six days a week before getting the children up and to school. She never watches television. In between designing collections with her team from their Battersea HQ, she embarks on VB tours, which involve her (plus entourage) heading of to key stores and markets, meeting customers, retailers and press. This year they have covered Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Los Angeles.
Alongside this, there is her role as a Unaids International Goodwill Ambassador, which is what tonight’s Ethiopia excursion is for. Serious involvement with a charity was something that she sought out after refecting on her 40th birthday last year. But fashion still collides – it was Anna Wintour who sent her frst to South Africa to meet women and children with HIV. ‘For whatever reason, people will listen to what I have to say, and so I can speak on behalf of these incredibly brave, strong women. I can tell people not just how terrible the situation is, but that we’re really making a diference,’ she says emphatically.
I ask how her children react to her being away so often. ‘They’re very supportive of what I do,’ she says. ‘I don’t really go away that much. David and I work it out so that we’re not away at the same time, so one of us is always here. The other day we were at Harper’s school as she had won a prize, and we were both there. It’s a juggling act, but we have great people around us to make sure it all works.’ Her diary is painstakingly managed. ‘I know what I am doing this time next year,’ she says. ‘When some designers go into the studio and say they weren’t inspired and didn’t get anything done, that’s great [for them]. We don’t have the luxury of having a day where we’re not coming up with something because we know what we have to achieve throughout the year to tick all of those boxes.’
With that, there is a hum of activity from outside – the piano lesson is over. Beckham’s PA comes in and puts some supermarket bags on the counter. Beckham gets up and starts to unpack them. She brandishes a banana at Harper, who has also scooted in, and asks whether she’d like one. The little girl jumps up on the table and heads straight for the biscuit jar. Victoria Beckham is available at 36 Dover Street, London W1 and at victoriabeckham.com
‘I’d like to work with a high-street brand, so I can reach out to women all around the world, no matter what their budget’