Dansk P — 76
Luminary
the
Victoria Line
Spring — Summer 2012
Spring — Summer 2012
Luminary
Dansk P — 77
“THE SUPPORT OF THE BRITISH FASHION INDUSTRY MEANS A HUGE AMOUNT. THEY LEFT THEIR PRECONCEPTIONS AT THE DOOR AND LET MY PRODUCT SPEAK FOR ITSELF”
Words — Anders Christian Madsen
Fashion loves nothing more than making kitsch cool. It is an exercise observed when Miuccia Prada tackles golfwear, when Christopher Kane takes on the beach sandal, and indeed when Victoria Beckham wins a British Fashion Award, too. “The support of the British fashion industry means a huge amount. They le! their preconceptions at the door and let my product speak for itself,” Victoria tells me when we confer via email a few weeks a!er the ceremony. For those of us in the audience, the Designer Brand award manifested itself as the ultimate nod of approval from a fashion industry, which hasn’t always been first in line to embrace the phenomenon that is Victoria Beckham. As Beckham teared up during her acceptance speech, the vibrations of this milestone moment could literally be felt through the theatre at The Savoy. High-powered fashion critics were seen weeping into their clutch bags. “It was so overwhelming and emotional,” Victoria says. “It means so much to me and especially for my team – they deserve it. I was so happy and proud for everyone because we’ve come such a long way in just over three years.” The Spice Girl who became WAG was no longer a hanger-on in the industry, but a recognised designer with more cool factor than most of her peers. If any new designer calls for respect in the industry, it is Beckham.
Photographer — Thomas Lohr Fashion Editor — Anders Sølvsten Thomsen Hair — Panos Papandrianos / CLM using Bumble & bumble Make-up — Thomas de Kluyver / D+V Management using MAC Pro Photographer’s Assistant — Daniel Ciufo Fashion Assistant — Riya Hollings Hair Assistant — Susi Lichtenegger Model — Ida Dyberg / Scoop Models Dress — Victoria, Victoria Beckham
“The new line is amazing,” I tell Victoria in an email, referring to her free-spirited new line of easy, girly dresses, simply called Victoria. “Thank you! I had been thinking about this line for a long time. I wanted to wear a certain type of dress and I couldn’t find it so I decided to set about creating it!” Victoria replies, her delightful penchant for exclamation points le! intact. Launching this season, the line is a material manifestation of Beckham’s fast-expanding fashion empire, and the success she’s gained since founding her high fashion label Victoria Beckham in 2009. “I really wanted to be able to give my customers a collection offering a perfect fit and a#ention to detail but maintain an affordable price point, and be able to offer a wider distribution for our retail partners,” she tells me. Five years
ago, if someone had told me that in 2012 I would be having an email exchange with Victoria Beckham about price points and retail partners, and writing a hats-off ode to her as a designer, I would have told them it was as unlikely as Dior firing Galliano, or Britney completing her third and fourth world tours. But making people stand corrected has sort of been the theme of Beckham’s career. It would be easy to mark her with the dirty stamp of ‘celebrity’ and blindly disregard her accomplishments in that snobby fashion way we practise too much. But the truth is, in order to survive what Beckham has survived, you need to have the stamina and mind of a world-class businessman. Born in 1974, Victoria Adams enjoyed an affluent upbringing in Hertfordshire, which, at 22, earned her the nickname of Posh when she rose to music fame with the legendary Spice Girls quintet. From this point on, Beckham’s biography is best depicted in terms of her style eras: a!er trademarking herself in li#le black dresses and cat suits through the 1990s, Beckham’s fashion fandom grew increasingly apparent when she and David Beckham started donning matching outfits following their marriage in 1999. With a solo career on the cards, the early 2000s saw the instatement of Beckham’s notorious highlighted extensions, bronzed skin, French manicure, huge sunglasses and signature basques. It was the age of the WAG and Beckham outdid them all, not least in designer dresses. But it would take a decade before fashion would see her as more than the power-shopping clotheshorse they took her for. “Everything is designed in-house,” Victoria tells me of her design process on the Victoria line. “I work closely with my team and design depending on what I want to wear and what feels right for me, while giving a strong fashion message.” Following the universally fla#ering ethos of her mainline, which has become the most celebrated characteristic of her work – a Victoria Beckham dress will make any woman look be#er, no ma#er her size or age – the line takes inspiration from
the cartoon character Emily The Strange. “I just loved her look and style. I knew I wanted to do something more girly and more fun and she was a perfect visual inspiration,” Victoria says. A 2013 screen version starring Chloe Moretz is in the works, but Beckham isn’t planning on trying her hand as costumier. “No,” she writes me, an exclamation point imminent. “I will have no involvement in the film!” Beckham first dabbled in clothes making during her early 2000s era, when she designed a hugely successful line of jeans for Rock & Republic. The launch of her dVb denim line followed, but Beckham had high-end dreams. As she moved around the world with David, from London to Madrid to Los Angeles, her highlights and bronzed skin slowly began to fade. Having formed friendships with the likes of Roland Mouret and Marc Jacobs, 2006 saw a reinvented Beckham infiltrating the fashion scene. What she had planned would stagger even the most cynical in the industry. Gone were the extensions, in came an array of sculptured mini-dresses and invitations to Chanel shows. As Beckham took her final bow on the Spice Girls reunion tour in 2008, it wasn’t just a farewell to her former career, but a send-off of Victoria Beckham as the world knew her. When she a#ended Elton John’s Oscar party in 2009 in a streamlined Morticia Addams-like evening dress from her Victoria Beckham debut collection, it was as Victoria Beckham the designer – not the Spice Girl, not the WAG. And she never looked back. No ma#er her style era, Beckham has always had the reverence of her audience. While fashion’s a#itude towards her may at times have drawn on certain kitsch factors rather than peer-acknowledged fandom, there has always been an undeniable air of admiration connected with her. Because the thing about Beckham is: she’s an iron lady. And as we prepare for the next instalment of Victoria Beckham world domination, I ask her if she plans to expand to other fashion weeks. “I show both lines in New York and at the moment I don’t see that changing,” she writes. “But I never say never!”