A narrow trouser suit and a slip dress. Broadly speaking, Victoria Beckham’s collectsion fell into these two distinct halves. Both come from personal lived experience: There is what she uses for day, and then her ideas for social appearances.
Basically, she laid out this territory pretty succinctly by Look 5 in her fall show. We saw two of her generous, practical coats; a conceptual cocktail dress and a slip dress; and her iteration of a navy tailored and quite boyishly narrow trouser suit. “Really, it all comes back to what’s flattering on the body,” she said.
In a preview, she had related this season’s inspiration to the Art Deco–era artist Tamara de Lempicka, whose stylized portraits of women in fluttery bias-cut dresses never varied until the end of her life. Perhaps the vaguely Cubist look of the second dress—two transparent crinoline panels with quilted fabric flowers trapped beneath—came from looking at de Lempicka. Later, a green chiffon bias-cut dress might also be tied back to Young Woman in Green, a 1931 painting by the artist, who has been collectsed by women such as Madonna and Barbra Streisand.
Still, there was no need to go down that particular rabbit hole in order to understand this season’s output. What VB is actually about is offering women practical lifewear; a daywear system of knits, coats, bomber jackets, and suits with a certain panache—one which is not insanely expensive either. As she’s a perfectionist; nothing escapes her studio in West London without her trying it on herself and figuring out the fit and the point of it.
The grandeur of her presentation, late at night in Paris, speaks to the bigger project of brand Beckham. Her successful beauty business was emphasized by the gift of her Portofino fragrance, which was left on every seat. The name refers to a memory of a secret romantic Italian holiday organized by her husband, David, in their early days as a couple in the public spotlight. That spotlight is still on them and their family in ways that everyone knows. They take the rough with the smooth and carry on—as this show did. Business as usual.
