Classic and sporty... It could only be Beckham’s new line
MEN’S STYLE EDITOR DAVID BECKHAM is surrounded by Three Lions crests. It’s a scene which might flash back to Wembley a decade ago were it not for the rattle of black cabs through the Mayfair streets and the patrician environs of a stately Georgian town house. It is, in fact, the home of Brand Beckham’s new venture, Kent & Curwen, the traditional sporting outfitter reinvented for a 21st-century audience.
“I consider myself very English, I’m proud of being English and this a brand that represents British heritage,” says Beckham, face handsomely lined and hair slicked back, the tattoos riddling up his neck and across his hands in contrast to the sharp collar and cuffs of his gentlemanly black wool overcoat, which is designed, like all of the collection, by Daniel Kearns.
“I’m not a designer – I leave that to Daniel and my wife – but this is a project I’m very proud of,” says Beckham, who in partnership with the Fung family, the billionaire dynasty that in the last three years has bought up Savile Row houses like penny sweets, has sought to steer Kent & Curwen in a more contemporary direction.
The venture into more substantial sartorial waters than just celebrity endorsement or campaigns is not, explains Beckham, that far of a leap. “I’m a partner in the business but Daniel understands how I like to look and how I like to dress, and how men want to dress in general.” And if there’s a man that knows how to carry off a pin-sharp Crombie coat like the one hanging to his left, it’s Beckham, a connoisseur of exceptional tailoring these days. “People know I’m very English in the way I like to dress, and that’s what we wanted to bring to this,” he says of the debut collection.
Kent & Curwen began in 1926 as a collegiate outfitter – creating regatta ties for Eton and Cambridge boating teams, cricket sweaters and outerwear for the sporting pursuits of the British aristocracy, and that sensibility is carried into this collection’s wool pea coats with military buttons, sweeping naval coats and hunting jackets. Rugby shirts and cricket sweaters come emblazoned with English rose and Three Lions emblems.
“Of course the Three Lions is associated with me, but it’s something that’s always been a part of the company, so there’s a nice harmony there. There are photos of me from when I was 11 wearing a rugby shirt with Three Lions on it. We also found incredible things in the archive,” says Beckham, gesturing to cricket shirts on display in glass cabinets, created in the 1920s and 30s for the Hollywood Cricket Club, worn by the likes of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Junior, and three preppy regattastriped jackets created for Parliament, Oxford and Cambridge races. Kearns points to a contemporary rendering of the regatta stripes on a sharply tailored jacket that “was more about Mick Jagger in the 1960s and Paul Weller in the 70s than Eton boating uniform”.
The resulting pieces are classically British with a dynamic, sporting panache – rather like the boy from Leytonstone himself. But might we expect some of the high fashion theatrics of Beckham’s youth?
“My style has evolved. I’m 41 years old now, so you start to dress in a different way as you grow older,” he says. “Over the years, I’ve definitely worn pieces that I look back at now and think ‘why did you wear that? How did you wear that? Wow, that was bold’. But there’s nothing I regret. That’s what makes fashion great.”