“I like to put a little bit of myself into my collections,” says Victoria Beckham. For the fall, she followed the thread of the semi-autobiographical main show she performed in Paris: ideas that emerged from the rural weekend life she now leads on the one hand, and from her ballet-mad girlhood on the other.
In her London showroom, the continuity made perfect sense as a collection inspired both by her talent for styling – and by her detailed, practical empathy for creating clothes that are interesting as fashion, but also simply useful for specific purposes. The influence of contemporary dance flows from her series of long, flowing dresses. Some have a cut-out neckline with wired, curled inserts: “A sense of movement, frozen,” as she imagines it.
Dresses have always been part of the VB vocabulary. Nicole Phelps even described her debut in New York in the spring of 2009 as ‘a dress collection’. Nearly 15 years later, her short, bodycon dresses have been replaced by other, more graceful signatures that engage her audience. Women keep coming back for her ankle-length take on modern tea dresses, ingeniously color-blocked knit dresses and that simple, sexy-sophisticated ruching device she slips into slip dresses. “It’s flattering and creates the optical illusion of the waist coming in,” she notes.
What is newer, but now well established, is its reputation for customization. That’s the side she calls “handsome femininity” in this collection – that is, the look of British heritage tweeds and preppy peacoats, paired with turtlenecks, shirts and cropped flared trousers, or dressed down with cargo trousers or different variations of denim pieces. She has a deliberate way of making these templates both interesting and easy to wear. A country blazer has a shaved lapel, which is stitched from the top. A skirt has a turned-up hem and an asymmetrically placed zipper, a pair of pants has interesting collages of back pockets and exposed seams, and a jacket has short, elbow-length sleeves with a bit of raw lining hanging out.
These are details that distinguish her clothes just enough from edgy bourgeois classics – not exaggerated, but cool enough for a woman who likes interesting constructions. This season, VB completed a number of looks with silk scarves printed in the same colors as its new fragrance collection. Other versions of the silk scarves were wrapped around leather handles or amusingly made into entire bags. Beckham is clearly into subliminal branding. It’s done subtly, without resorting to too many logos, even though her empire now extends from ready-to-wear and accessories to beauty and fragrance.
