A little considered aspect of the London landscape is how it’s home to so many of the world’s strongest women designers. Among those who maintain studios in the city are Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney, Sarah Burton, Clare Waight Keller, Roksanda Ilincic, and Victoria Beckham. They also happen to share a generational position—age 50 or thereabouts, with loads of children between them. Plus: based on decades of work and life experience, not to mention emotional and practical intelligence about clothes, these are designers who know exactly who they’re dressing.
The documentary of how Victoria Beckham has hit this in-her-prime phase as a designer is playing on Netflix—she’s in America promoting it now. The dramas and pitfalls of her startup years make for some cliff-hanging moments until she reaches the point of confidence and focus that her collections exude now. One thing that’s not changed: She’s always there to talk through her collections, just as she did from the beginning.
Her grown-up proposition revolves around dresses and tailoring, a clarity honed from the experiments she talks about as a girl, and the early tutoring of Roland Mouret, who taught her to drape on her own body—that, and a self-confessed control freak image-consciousness honed from a lifetime of being photographed from every angle. Exact but relaxed, her pre-collection balances glamour with practicality, without skimping on design.
When you have a great cut, why throw it away? The VB blazer is a signature testament to that; it’s tailored to read oversized, with pressed sleeves, but actually skims in to give a sense of waist. This season, the nonchalant detail of a cutaway collar jumps out: a chic note of deconstruction adding oomph to an impeccable failsafe piece.
Dress-wise, she’s mastered the highly tricky art of asymmetry. There’s something in the liquid flow of the shapes—satin, lace, or jersey—which vaguely echoes the 1930s (she said she’s been looking at the Marchesa Casati). The construction shows clearly how she thinks of the body in the round: hemlines dip, a shoulder’s bared, a ruched zone clasps a waist, a scarf-like drape flows down a back. Lately, Beckham has been practicing this herself when out and about with her husband and family and in front of King Charles. Grand, but quite simple in effect, it’s her own look that radiates the confidence of a grown woman.