One small aspect of London’s landscape is how it’s home to many of the world’s strongest female designers. Among those who maintain studios in the city are Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney, Sarah Burton, Claire Waight Keller, Roksinda Alankic, and Victoria Beckham. They also share a generation location. Also: 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.
A documentary about how Victoria Beckham hit the prime stage as a designer is playing on Netflix—she’s promoting it now in the US. The dramas and losses of his formative years make for some cliff-hanging moments until he reaches a point of confidence and focus that his collections now end. One thing that hasn’t changed: She’s always there to talk through her collections, just like she’s done since the beginning.
Her growing repertoire revolves around dress and tailoring, which she talks about as a girl, and the early education of Roland Mouret, who taught her to draw on her own body, and from every angle she likes the sense of an absurd image of self-contradictory control. Precise yet relaxed, his pre-collection balances glamor with practicality, without sacrificing design.
Why throw away a great kit when you have it? The VB Blazer is his signature statement piece. It’s designed to read large, with pressed sleeves, but actually helps to give a sense of waist. This season, a cutaway takes the leap from the collar’s unflattering detail: a chic note from Deacon construction that adds oomph to an otherwise innocent failsafe piece.
In terms of clothing, she has mastered the very difficult art of contrast. There’s something about the fluid flow of the shapes — satin, lace, or jersey — that vaguely echoes the 1930s (she said she’s looking at Marchesa Casti). The construction clearly shows how she thinks about the body in the round: hemlines dip, shoulder straps, a shoulder zone cinching a waist, a scarf-like drape flowing down the back. Lately, Beckham has been practicing it herself when she’s with her husband and family and in front of King Charles. Grand, but in reality it is very simple, it is her own appearance that radiates the confidence of a big woman.
