Victoria Beckham On Gaining Control & Letting It Go Again

The designer and former Spice Girl reflects on 50 and those promising years of business.

On a balmy recent Sunday, Victoria Beckham sank into a banquette at the Fasano Fifth Avenue, a fancy hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, her pout a little puffier than it used to be, her slight frame sheathed in an inky silk suit of her own design. Tucked into a corner just within view was a pair of black crutches so streamlined and glossy they might have passed for an outsize accessory.

In fact, they were a testament to Beckham’s stubborn grit.

A fall at the gym had hobbled her but not kept her from taking her bows on crutches at her namesake label’s runway show at Paris Fashion Week in March. Or from celebrating a milestone birthday, her 50th, at a lavish bash in London. Nor did it prevent her from hopping a flight to New York, where she had come to oversee and star in an ad campaign promoting the line of fragrances she had introduced.

The perfumes were an expansion of the Victoria Beckham Beauty brand she started in 2019, which was itself an expansion of the Victoria Beckham fashion line she started in 2008 — when many still remembered her as Posh, the sophisticated Spice Girl who just happened to be married to British football star David Beckham.

After her pivot from pop star to designer, some self-appointed critics were quick to dismiss Victoria Beckham, who grew up in Hertfordshire, England, as an unschooled Barbie from the hinterlands. Her career has given rise to plenty of speculation among fashion insiders: Is she for real? Is she selling a stake in the company to LVMH, the luxury giant? Will the business be profitable?

But Beckham is nothing if not tenacious. And 16 years after starting her brand with her husband and Simon Fuller, the creator of American Idol, she is more inclined than ever to dig in her towering heels.

“If I’m still being judged I really don’t care,” Beckham said in an accent that seems to have grown plummier over the years. “It’s been a real roller-coaster of a ride for this brand. But I’m feeling grounded and proud of what I’ve achieved.”

With that she flashed a rare grin. “For so many years in pictures I didn’t smile,” she said. “That was definitely a sign of insecurity.”

Beckham has reason these days to be upbeat: At a time when some luxury fashion businesses are faltering, the Victoria Beckham brand appears to be finding its footing. The business, which had lost money nearly every year since its introduction, recently pulled out of the red after expanding into beauty and bags.

Marie Leblanc, who runs the brand’s fashion arm, said that 2022 was a turning point for the company. That year, it reported revenues of about US$75 million, a roughly 44% increase compared with 2021, when its revenues were about $52 million. Between the same period, the company’s reported operating losses shrank to about $1.1 million, down from about $5 million.

“For the first time both fashion and beauty were profitable,” said Leblanc, who joined Beckham’s brand in 2019 after working at others including Isabel Marant and Celine.

David Belhassen, the founder of NEO Investment Partners, a private equity firm that invested about $40 million into Beckham’s brand in 2017, told WWD in May that the company’s operating cash flow, or Ebitda, grew in 2023.

Beckham has been chasing success since her earliest years. “At school I was never the brightest child,” she said. “I had to work really hard.” And, difficult as it is to conceive, the designer, whose recent birthday party drew A-listers including Salma Hayek and Tom Cruise, once thought of herself as a misfit. “I had terrible skin and was quite awkward.”

She credited pop stardom with giving her more confidence — and commercial savvy. “What better way to understand PR and marketing than to have been a Spice Girl in the ‘90s,” she said.

Ed Burstell, a retail brand consultant in New York, described Beckham as “a shrewd businesswoman,” one who recognised that expanding into beauty could broaden her audience.

Burstell first met her in the early 2000s, when she was an aspiring designer and he was a senior vice-president at Bergdorf Goodman. By the time Beckham started her fashion line, he had become the managing director at Liberty, the luxury department store in London. Burstell considered carrying the collection there, but concluded it would not resonate with customers.

“The style, the cut of the clothes, they were good,” he recalled. “But the clothes were quiet at a time when fashion was less quiet. She didn’t get the credit she deserved for being on the forefront of quiet luxury.”

Indeed, she has operated largely from instinct. And, said David Beckham, her husband of 25 years, she has never been afraid to hitch up her sleeves. “I’ve always been in awe of her drive and work ethic,” he wrote in an email. “The business has faced many obstacles over the years but she stuck to her vision.”

Even now, Victoria Beckham acknowledged, “I’m a control freak.”

She had to tamp down her impulse to call the shots during the production of Beckham, the four-part documentary series about her husband and their family released by Netflix last year. “I found that you can’t control every picture, every scene,” she said, “and that took me out of my comfort zone.”

Beckham’s candour in her scenes all but stole the show. But the experience was trying. Most challenging were the moments in which she was asked to address her husband’s alleged affair with his personal assistant, Rebecca Loos, in 2003. While David Beckham has consistently denied that it happened, there was friction in the marriage. “I was the most unhappy I have ever been in my entire life,” Victoria Beckham said in the documentary.

She seems to have since made her peace — and to have made some discoveries as well. During the filming, “I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t check the monitor, I didn’t check the lighting,” she said. “There is something quite liberating about that.”

Growing comfortable with letting go has not dampened her drive. “I’m still incredibly ambitious,” she said. “But I’m also more relaxed. And isn’t that the great thing about getting older?”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

Written by: Ruth La Ferla

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

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