Victoria Beckham Collection

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK 14.02.2011

Victoria Beckham Autumn/ Winter 2011 Collection at New York Fashion Week

Beckham presented the 100th dress she has designed, and introduced her first shoe collaboration with Christian Louboutin.

Before introducing each of the 29 pieces for next autumn/winter, as is her signature, she said: "I'm miked-up, but I'm not going to sing, so it's all good."

Wearing a loose beige cashmere "sack" dress with a built-in scarf, she laughed:"This is the only thing in the new collection that fits me. When I started designing the collection I didn't know I was pregnant."

The collection was a bold and colourful departure from her recognised hug-the-body silhouette. She introduced a vibrant coat in scarlet which she called "Little Red Riding Hood"; a new looser silhouette - "so women can be stylish and comfortable"; hooded "nomad" dresses in magenta; and a flattering flurry of pleats in metallic chiffon and jacquard for day and evening.

The clothes were accessorised with knee-high boots and shoes designed in collaboration with Christian Louboutin, another first.

The collection included Number 100, literally the 100th dress she has designed, which was a striking saffron, fitted dress with her signature zip snaking down the spine.

"I can't wait to fit into all these again," she said.

Mrs Beckham denied various reports which have claimed she is expecting a much-longed-for daughter. "I don't know whether it's a boy or a girl. I knew with the three boys, but this time I wanted it to be a surprise."

The former Posh Spice, and wife of David Beckham, who is expecting the couple's fourth child at the end of June, has enjoyed a spectacular rise to fashion stardom in a little over two years.

Her fashion collection, produced in partnership with the showbiz entrepreneur, Simon Fuller, has become a favourite choice of Hollywood celebrities.

Stars who have recently worn her designs on the red carpet include Gwyneth Paltrow, Blake Lively, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Trudie Styler and Elle Macpherson.

By Hilary Alexander

www.telegraph.co.uk

STYLE.COM 13.02.2011

AW11 Complete Collection

Also new for Fall were coats. But whereas elsewhere she was thinking loose and liberating, here she was all rigor and precision. The toppers were cut in structured wool, and their stand-up buckled collars notwithstanding, they were the opposite of tricked-out. Amid all the utilitarian parkas we'll be seeing on selling floors come fall, they'll look practically stately. That's fine with Beckham, for whom the classics have always trumped the trends.

What will she do for an encore next season? Pantsuits, maybe? After this first shot at tailoring, they seem like the next logical step for a designer who, ironically, given her celebrity status, pays closer attention to her clients' real-life needs than many of her peers. It's an approach that continues to pay dividends.

By Nicole Phelps

www.style.com/

VOGUE.COM 13.02.2011

Victoria Beckham Fall 2011 RTW

It’s Victoria Beckham’s “nightmare” dress: vibrant vermilion crepe with a deep V in front and back, tapering into an A-line which hits below the knee. Such simplicity, she meant, was a hell of a bother to fit properly. Well, all the best things are, but that dress (which, she pointed out in her narrated voice-over, “also looks great with a turtleneck”) stands as an honorable marker of how successfully she’s expanding her repertoire in her sixth season. 

VOGUE.CO.UK 13.02.2011

Victoria Show Report

CYNICS beware! Victoria Beckham may just be the living example of having it all. Not only is she dainty and ravishing, with angular features and a shock of thick dark hair (pulled into a taut ponytail today), she has a handsome world-class athlete for a husband, three gorgeous sons and another child on the way. Oh, and did we mention she can make a mean dress too?

Max Berlinger

www.vogue.co.uk

GUARDIAN.CO.UK 13.02.2011

Victoria Beckham In The Running To Design Dress For Kate Middleton

At New York fashion week show Beckham reveals that Kate's family have asked to see a selection of dresses.

When Victoria Beckham launched her fashion label two and a half years ago, she would never have been allowed to get away with the clothes she showed Sunday at New York fashion week. The loose cashmere draping, the austere shapes and the downright difficult hemlines would have vexed both critics and potential customers alike.

"I've had to wait until now to do this," she admitted. "People just wouldn't have understood it before."

But after five successful seasons, her critics silenced and recession-defying balance sheets, Beckham can take her designs in whatever direction she likes.

Her style of catwalk presentation has proved influential. Her front-row side commentary and more intimate shows have inspired other designers in New York to scale back this season.

Sunday's commentary began with a self-deprecating joke "I'm miked-up, but don't worry: I'm not singing," she said. A neat trick which brought her audience on side and then allowed her to explain the technicalities of the designs – for example, one swing dress consisted of more than four metres of draped fabric.

Her label now has enormous reach. Beckham revealed that Kate Middleton's people have requested a selection of dresses from her previous collection. If all goes well, she will be able to boast a royal seal of approval.

Beckham and Simon Fuller, her partner in the label, are playing the long game in building the brand. Each season they add a new element. At first, it was just dresses – and only 400 were produced in total. Then, last season, came bags, and now, for the first time, winter coats .

The new collection was all about loosening up. "I want to give women the freedom to look beautiful and to feel comfortable," said Beckham.

The design style is, by her own admission, very personal. On Sunday, the designer, five months pregnant, was wearing a loose cashmere-draped dress that had the ease and comfort of an oversized, if incredibly deluxe, scarf. As a result, baby No 4, who is set to make an appearance in early July – but whose sex may be discovered as early as next week, according to the designer – was subtly disguised.

But this was a not a collection conceived with one eye on maternity chic. Beckham admitted that she had designed it before she discovered that she was pregnant. Although her creations were not heavily corseted, this was the only piece that she could actually wear. "I'm looking forward to wearing more from the collection once I've had the baby," she admitted.

There are four coat designs – all with sleek, skinny arms. One was bright red with a giant buckle at the neck. Another was pleated, another mid-calf length.

So-called desert brights, such as saffron and deep magenta, featured heavily, as did pleated double crepe dresses. The most striking was a deceptively simple A-line in vivid red with a deep V at the back. "There's always one that looks simple but is a nightmare to do," she explained.

With each new element added to the collection, demand is still outstripping supply. This not only builds up the brand step by step, but it ensures that there is something new to focus on in terms of the customer and the critics.Both Beckham and Fuller have form in brand building. They won't be tempted to rush. E-commerce and standalone boutiques have been mentioned as future ambitions, not immediate concerns.

This approach is clearly working. Despite being a fledgling label, last autumn Beckham was nominated for her first British Fashion Award alongside industry giants such as Mulberry and Burberry. The bags, which carry four-figure price tags, are selling "phenomenally well". Figures from November show that orders for the dress collection are up 64% on last year.

By Imogen Fox

www.guardian.co.uk

NEW YORK TIMES 13.02.2011

Victoria Beckham Deconstructed

Victoria Beckham right after her show, said she likes to surprise people, which is why, after six seasons of showing variations of her signature skintight and corseted dresses, she decided to loosen things up, even more than she did last season. Well, for that reason, and because she is pregnant, she confessed.

But Ms. Beckham also likes to stick to a script, and by that I mean she likes to describe her designs as each model comes out, something she has done since her first presentation. It’s part of her charm, and I almost panicked when I stepped into her Upper East Side space this season and saw a constructed runway set with a larger audience. But Ms. Beckham wore a draped cashmere dress of her own design, now with a microphone attached to the front. And so it began, with Dionne Warwick’s “Theme from the Valley of the Dolls” playing softly as backup.

“I really feel this season I have grown and evolved as a designer and as a person,” she said. “As I have grown and become more confident in my own skin, I realized I wanted to give women the freedom to be more comfortable.”

Out came a model in a loose magenta crepe dress with a hood. “This is a textured dress,” Ms. Beckham said. “The hood can be worn up or loosely down so you can really make this your own.” It was followed by a short swinging trapeze in the same color, with structured shoulders, definitely a step forward.

Before long, after a few long bright dresses with pleated skirts, came what Ms. Beckham announced was her 100th dress design, a saffron double crepe dress that was as slinky and fitted as her very first, Dress No. 1. You half expected bells to go off, she was that excited.

“So after 100th dress, I thought, ‘What can I do next?’” she said. “And coats are what I thought of.” Out came a red coat with a buckle at the neck in a meaty fabric because, Ms. Beckham said, a coat should be warm.

“Yes, that is Barbra Streisand,” she said, as the song changed. It was “Prisoner,” the love theme from “Eyes of Laura Mars.” (The soundtrack was a bit on the dark side.)

Then came a slight black dress that she described as “the perfect little winter day dress.” It was fitted and short, and, she said, “I can’t wait to fit in it again.”

I’m pretty sure she could still fit in that dress, but for now, she said she favors the two-tone draped cashmere dresses that followed, as well as a short cocoon dress in a honeycomb jacquard. These were very pretty, and Ms. Beckham swore they would look as good on anyone besides her.

“This is the kind of dress a few seasons ago I would have been afraid of,” she said. “But I love how the drape is seemingly frozen in time.”

By Eric Wilson

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com

VOGUE 04.01.2011

The Vogue Interview

Victoria Beckham may have appeared solo on the cover of Vogue six times before (plus once on US Vogue with the Spice Girls), but for her latest Vogue cover she reveals how her style has changed since becoming a designer - and inside she describes what it's like to wake up with David.

LAUREN MILLIGAN

www.vogue.co.uk

WWD 12.09.2010

Victoria Beckham: RTW Spring 2011

Sculpture, curves and Brancusi, with a dash of the Sixties, were the key talking points in Victoria Beckham’s charmingly rehearsed spring presentation, but one look at her said it all: The signature short, tight and sexy silhouette has been traded in for a girlish fit-and-flare, and her severe pixie hair, grown out into easy curls. “My personal style has really loosened up,” said Beckham. And since she’s the house designer and muse, the same goes for the collection, a lovely lineup, now featuring its softer side.

Beckham called it “probably the most directional thing I’ve done,” relatively speaking. Still dresses-only, the collection was comprised of smart, approachable shapes that tastefully showcase a woman’s sensuality. Languid parachute silk was effortlessly wrapped and knotted into a purple day dress, and cut long and lean on a glamorous black evening gown, draped to perfection and secured with an invisible interior belt. Everything had a distinct femininity, even when the look was structured, as in the stiff lacquered jacquard dresses that were fitted up top with short, full skirts.

As Beckham said, she’s evolving, in more ways than one: She also introduced her new line of handbags — six chic, boxy styles of which Beckham has a favorite. “It’s called the Victoria bag,” she said. “Because I’m going to use it every day.”

NEW YORK TIMES 03.09.2010

Victoria Beckham: Is She for Real

Victoria Beckham talks the talk. Guiding a visitor through her fall 2010 collection, spread on a rack in her studio in Battersea, she draws out a dress recently worn by Cameron Diaz, identifying its fabric authoritatively as a metallic jacquard. Another, shapely and lavishly draped, is underpinned by domette wadding, she says, to hold its folds in place. Still another, crisp as corn flakes, was made of gazar. “Gazar, I love it,” Ms. Beckham murmurs, savoring the term like a vintage Bordeaux.

A quick study, she has mastered the argot of the cutting room with the same alacrity that has marked all her most ardent pursuits — the voice and music lessons that laid the foundations for her career as the pop idol known as Posh Spice; her marriage to the British soccer star David Beckham, an exercise in family branding; her wardrobe, engineered to show off her whippet frame and improbably lusty chest.

“I don’t do anything by halves,” she says, an edge in her voice. “If you’re going to do something, do it properly, I think. Otherwise there is no point in doing it at all.”

That resolve has paid off handsomely. In recent months Ms. Beckham, she of the contorted public poses, racy aphorisms and fleeting television career, has emerged as an industry force, the wily maverick of New York Fashion Week.

Written off not so long ago as a pneumatic Barbie of the hinterlands, Ms. Beckham has been a fixture in the front row at presentations like those of Chanel and Marc Jacobs. Her sinuously curvy cocktail dresses have been worn by Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore and Ms. Diaz and are showcased in stores alongside luxury labels like Narciso Rodriguez and Vera Wang. “Don’t underestimate her,” said Anna Wintour among the many editors and retailers who have embraced her, pointing out that Ms. Beckham has managed, in a scant four seasons, to shed her dubious standing as the girl least likely to succeed.

“She’s growing up,” said Ken Downing, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus, and an early advocate of Ms. Beckham’s designs. “Her knowledge of dressmaking is impressive. She understands how to bring out the best in the female form, and that’s one reason our clients are drawn to what she does.” As important, he said, “She knows how good clothes feel when they’re on. Because she has worn them.”

Good clothes are necessary adjunct to a life spent basking in the public eye. Ms. Beckham has cavorted for the camera in the Mediterranean-style villa in Beverly Hills, Calif., that she shares with her husband, a home filled with art by Damien Hirst, Sam Taylor-Wood and Tracey Emin. She has sashayed along fashion runways, modeled in high-profile advertising campaigns and appeared as a guest on television shows like “Ugly Betty” “Project Runway” and “American Idol”.

Her life — the feverishly documented spending sprees, the star turns on the red carpet, the clamor for her designs — may be enviable, but she wants you to know it has left her unspoiled. “Doing diva,” she said in London in June, “that’s completely pointless.”

INSIDERS powerful enough to score an invitation to her intimate spring 2011 showing next Sunday in a town house on East 63rd Street may well take her at her word. They will be greeted by a woman aglow in, though not overtly dazzled by, her own success, one who serves as the commentator for her shows — confessing, rather disarmingly, her relative ignorance. “Look, it’s a very basic way that I am doing this,” she said last season. “Technically, it’s probably not the right way.”

Her dresses, once so corseted that they gave off a whiff of kitsch, are loosening up, exuding at times a patrician breeziness. Whisking a visitor around her London headquarters, she said: “My style has relaxed a bit. I think you will see that in this next collection.”

You will also see a self-assured creature whose angular features have grown softer and more womanly, her turnout a departure from the constricting get-ups that once were her fashion signature.

Diamond studs wink in her ears and a pink gold Rolex gleams on her wrist — but these are discrete compared with the rhinestone studded hipster jeans she flaunted in New York only a handful of years ago.

The brief skirt she wore for her interview was demurely balanced by a cropped Alaïa cardigan that revealed nothing more brazen than a line of Hebrew scripture tattooed at the base of her neck: “I am my lover’s and my lover is mine,” meant to cement her marriage bond, which has survived numerous allegations of Mr. Beckham’s infidelities. Through it all — the up-and-down marriage, the abortive singing career, the storming of fashion’s citadel and the occasional misstep, including the failure of an earlier denim line — Ms. Beckham has proved a deft architect of her own ascent.

One part inspiration, three parts aspiration, she is quick to disclose the great source of her drive. “I am a control freak,” she said calmly in her studio. No Ghesquiere or Galliano, she does not claim to be an innovator. “She takes conventional dresses and makes them stand out,” said Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue. But a dedication to perfection has played a significant part in the advancement of her fashion career.

Yet Ms. Beckham, by her own account, is a wobbly work in progress. “I’m very aware that I’m working my way up the ladder,” she said. “I have a long, long way to go.”

With her business partner, Simon Fuller, the creator of “American Idol,” she presides over a luxury brand encompassing dresses, denim, sunglasses and now a line of handbags that will make its debut on the runway next week. Her dresses, built on a contour-perfecting inner scaffolding, are magnets to the well-heeled clients ready to pay for a Grecian draped tunic or urn-shaped cocktail dress. Their growing allegiance has contributed to sales in excess of $7 million last year, said Zach Duane, the company’s senior vice president for business development, a figure that would hold steady through this year as well.

Not so impressive, perhaps, by the standards of industry behemoths who tally their sales in the billions of dollars. But Ms. Beckham envisions a measured growth for her brand. “We are moving in baby steps,” she said of the line, mostly financed at the outset with the proceeds — under $1 million — from the sales of the Beckhams’ successful fragrance line.

The collection is tightly distributed; the dresses are made in England and carried in 20 stores around the world. New denim and eyewear collections are being sold in 100 stores, Mr. Duane said, and free-standing Victoria Beckham boutiques are in the offing.

Ms. Beckham, he indicated, can take much of the credit for the label’s success. “She is incredibly involved in pricing, wanting to know where we’re at in terms of turnover, and how the costs are being managed,” he said. “She is fully aware that this is the only way that you can properly run a business.”

She is certainly integral to the design process, draping her dresses on herself. “I might get a piece of fabric and tie it around me, then ask an assistant to pin it for me,” she said. “I’m not claiming to be a master draper. The bottom line is: Would I wear this?”

Her beaver-ish attentiveness to the fit, construction and marketing of her line has just won her a British Fashion Council nomination as Designer Brand of the Year. It has also secured her enviable retail real estate. At Bergdorf Goodman, her dresses, which sell from roughly $1,500 to $3,700, “are among the highest sell-through performers,” said Jim Gold, chief executive of the store. What’s more, there is a wait list. “It’s not unusual for a dress to be reserved two or three deep,” he said.

She may like the taste of victory. But Ms. Beckham is still fending off critics from inside an armor of self-deprecation. “I’m so camp, such a gay man trying to get out,” she likes to say. And, “It’s exhausting being fabulous.”

Her sauciness has endeared her to no less a cultural arbiter than Marc Jacobs, who befriended Ms. Beckham and featured her in an ad campaign, in which she allowed herself to be photographed upended, her legs projecting from a shopping bag and waving in the air. Mr. Jacobs’s public embrace went some way toward redeeming her in the eyes of the fashion cognoscenti.

Yet she is still being held to the coals by some insiders who tagged her from the beginning as an upstart, just another in long line of pop confections to brand her initials on someone else’s frocks. Skepticism has dogged her since she announced her intention to create her fashion label.

“There is always a certain amount of bias involved when you have a name as big as hers,” acknowledged Holli Rogers, the buying director for Net-a-Porter, now Ms. Beckham’s biggest global client. The Web-based company picked up her line in its first season, but not without “a lot of deliberation,” Ms. Rogers recalled. “We had to take into consideration, ‘Is this a marketable brand for our level of customer?’ ”

In February, the New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn dismissed Ms. Beckham’s fall collection as a succession of “ladylike vamp dresses straight from the movies. I could see them on TCM any old time.”

The barbs sting, Ms. Beckham acknowledged, but not enough to deflect her from her purpose. “I want to build something that’s very respected,” she said with a pleading urgency. Her career, she added, “is about getting things right. I want to make sure I’m in this position in 20 years’ time.”

You believe her, even feel for her. Still, it’s tough to forget that Ms. Beckham is a skilled performer, balancing a calculated raciness with a great show of decorum and humility. For the space of a morning she held her runaway tongue in check, sparing the salty commentary that has seasoned past conversations. “You have to go to a sex shop to get this spray to polish them,” she once said of a pair of thigh-high PVC boots she wore for a Macy’s appearance. More than once she has boasted about the size of her husband’s penis.

But holding forth at her London studio, she dabbed at the corners of her mouth, perching or alternately rocking on the edge of her chair like a schoolgirl in a scratchy pinafore — her propriety evidently conceived to disarm the greatest cynics.

Ed Burstell, who first encountered Ms. Beckham a couple of years ago, during his tenure as a top executive at Bergdorf Goodman, relished her sales pitch, describing it as girly and unscripted. Ms. Beckham had approached him as an artless supplicant, he recalled, alighting in his boardroom to show off her new line of sunglasses.

“She had all the frames in a plastic bag,” said Mr. Burstell, who is now the managing director for Liberty in London, adding with a hoot, “She pulled some of them out and was modeling some of the frames for me, really getting into it, really working it. She was funny, but at the same time relentless.”

Ms. Beckham’s persistence is ingrained. “Nothing has ever come easy to me,” she said wryly. “At school I was never the brightest child. I had to work really hard.” Acutely aware of her shortcomings, she can be her own toughest critic. “I’m no Mariah Carey,” she said of her time as a Spice Girl. As a designer, she thinks of herself as still being in a formative stage, her style sense as fungible as her public persona. Why not? “I find it really boring when people are afraid to change,” she said.

Her metamorphosis seems well in keeping with her ever-mutating aims. What motivates her? “You have to think that she doesn’t want to be eclipsed by her husband,” Mr. Burstell said, an observation she would be unlikely to challenge.

The label of WAG, a British acronym reserved for the brassily acquisitive wives and girlfriends of soccer players, seems to leave her unfazed. “I was probably responsible for creating that look,” Ms. Beckham said, “the long hair extensions, the fake tan, lots of makeup.” But unlike her presumptive peers, “I’ve never really been a true WAG,” she said quickly. “I’ve always had a career.”

There are still great gaps in her catalog of accomplishments. “I would love to be Lady Beckham,” she once joshed in a radio interview. But you suspect that her remarks are only half in jest.

“You can’t buy class,” she said. But a string of good works may not hurt. “I grew up obviously admiring Lady Diana’s style, the amount that she gave, the charities,” she said. The Beckhams have helped raise millions in support of cancer research and children’s education. The Victoria and David Beckham Charitable Trust serves children in need, providing wheelchairs, prosthetics and other forms of assistance.

As revealing is her guest list for an imaginary dinner party, not just the predictably aristocratic likes of Grace Kelly and Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, but also contemporary idols like Cate Blanchett; Tilda Swinton; Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue; and, oh, yes, Michelle Obama. “I really would love to dress her,” Ms. Beckham said almost plaintively.

For all her ambition, Ms. Beckham is not ready to slough off the last remnants of her working-class past. In the 1980s, her father, an electrical distributor, celebrated his own success by trading up from a van to a shiny Rolls-Royce and dropping her off at school in it. Ms. Beckham was mortified. “Daddy,” she remembered begging him, “can we please go in the van?”

“I just wanted to fit in,” she recalled, cringing at the memory.

She takes pride just the same in being her father’s daughter, self-made to the core, the product of an unwavering optimism. She is aware her career isn’t bulletproof. At least not yet. It was built, after all, on “not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

“My whole life has been that way,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed proving people wrong.”

By Ruth La Ferla

VOGUE 28.07.2010

Vogue - Turkey

Victoria Beckham has notched up her sixth Vogue cover - this time for the Turkish edition. The singer-turned-designer was shot by esteemed photographer Ellen Von Unwerth wearing a black mini dress and studded heels for its August issue.

Beckham has previously appeared on the covers of British, Indian, Russian and German Vogue- as well as for US Vogue along with her fellow Spice Girls - and was joined by her husband David for a photo shoot for the British magazine in 1999.

Inside the issue, Victoria is wearing a selection of swimwear, Agent Provocateur lingerie and dresses by Turkish designer talent including Yildirim Mayruk.

10 MAGAZINE 06.06.2010

Victoria

She is looking hot - like no 35-YEAR-old mother of three I've ever seen. 

CLOCK THE FRONT COVER! That'll be the workout bod she achieved and maintained as star of the Armani campaign, in which, svelte and polished, she lay on a bed hinting: "Come hither!" 

When she had confirmation that she was to be our first ever celebrity cover, she screamed.  She was on her phone at the airport at the time and some folk looked over.  "READ ALL ABOUT IT!"

Text: Richard Gray

Photo: Cedric Buchet

www.10magazine.com/women

WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY 08.12.2009

Victoria Beckham: A Celebrity Designer Driven to Succeed

With her burgeoning dress business in its fourth season, the Spice Girl-turned-designer has taken her denim and eyewear collections in-house, and has overhauled and renamed each. The new styles will make their debut Wednesday on Net-a-porter.com and at a few select stores. She also has cooked up two artistically chic short films for the occasion that will be shown exclusively on Net-a-porter for a week, and last month redesigned her Web site, victoriabeckham.com, from top to bottom. Her personal appearances will be ramped up in the months ahead, with one at Bergdorf Goodman during New York Fashion Week being a key cameo in February. Television viewers also will get to see the name behind the brand when she tests the talent as a judge on “American Idol” next month.

Rather than rest easy on her Spice Girls earnings or her husband David’s take-home as one of the world’s highest-paid athletes, Beckham is dead set on earning her keep in the world of fashion. Their joint wealth is said to be north of $205 million, but they still ferry their three sons to and from school regularly. During a telephone interview last week, the former pop star mentioned how she had spent the previous day chaperoning 40 six-year-olds on a field trip to a local airport for a lesson on transportation.

Whether dubbed a perfectionist, overachiever or control freak, the 35-year-old has been in the public eye long enough to not be sidetracked by naysayers. “I plan on still being here in 25 to 30 years’ time,” she said of her London-based business. “It’s about doing things gradually and building the brand in a strategic way. It’s about finding the right time, the right team. With everything that I do, I will only do it after I’ve done all my homework. I really am a perfectionist, and I don’t want to rush anything. It’s not just about putting my name on a product and getting it out there. That’s not what is important to me.

“At the start, it was tough because people had preconceptions, but I worked incredibly hard and kept my head down. After three successful collections — though I’ve got a long, long way to go and a lot of work to do, and I will always feel that I have to prove myself, always — people say, ‘Who is my competition?’ I’m my competition. I want to do better next season than I did this season. And I’m sure the season after that I will want to beat myself again,” she said. “There have been people that have wanted to knock me that haven’t been able to because they haven’t been able to argue with the quality or the sell-throughs.”

Industry sources estimate the Victoria Beckham dress, denim and sunglass business will ring up $7.5 million in sales next year. So hot are her dresses that thieves stole 75 spring styles last week from a delivery van in West London. En route to Heathrow Airport, the driver stopped to make another delivery and returned to find the padlock smashed. Two robbers rushed from the back of the van with the designer loot, according to British reports. The heist was described by one source as “meticulously planned.” Beckham declined comment Monday.

Jim Gold, Bergdorf Goodman president and chief executive officer, said, “Victoria Beckham is one of the great style icons today, and a supremely talented designer. I have great certainty that her new sunglass and denim collections will be extremely well received. As we have seen with her couture dress collection, the moment she wears a product of her own design, it becomes immediately coveted by others.”

Through a new partnership, the British company Cutler and Gross is handling Beckham’s eyewear. In regard to the denim, she is no longer working with Western Glove Works. Spring distribution for the denim and sunglasses will include Bergdorf Goodman, Net-a-porter.com, Harvey Nichols and Maria Luisa, among other stores. Denim retails from $215 to $485 for slim charcoal jeans with square rivets. Eyewear starts at $349 for acetate Wayfarers and tops off at $525 for metal flat-top sunglasses.

“I’m not going to lie — there have been teething problems along the way,” said Beckham, perhaps alluding to the tough run for her dVb denim line, which was launched but subsequently phased out by Saks Fifth Avenue and other stores. “It is always tough when you have partners — you don’t have as much control as you would like. After the success of the dress collection, it just seemed like a natural progression to really take control and take the denim and the sunglasses in-house.

“Everything is now under Victoria Beckham. DVb is no more. Everything is different,” she said, adding the silhouettes, denim and factories have changed.

As for her decision to up the workload, Beckham said: “I can cope with mistakes if they are mistakes that I make myself. So I decided, though it’s more pressure, the time is right.”

Marc Jacobs recently acknowledged her drive. “She is someone who has always wanted to design clothes. She knows the body, she loves it and she’s working her ass off,” he said last month at the WWD CEO Apparel/Retail Summit.

Friendly as they are — Beckham appeared in one of Jacobs’ ads barelegged and upside down in a shopping bag — she didn’t clue him in on her design pursuits. “When I came out with my first collection, I didn’t even tell Marc. Well, I felt a little bit embarrassed. He’s Marc Jacobs. What else can I say? I never really told him, and then we went to dinner and he said congratulations on all the reviews and the quality of my work. I’ve learned so much from him. I am such a sponge whenever I’m around him. He is one of the most intelligent, interesting people that I have ever met.”

 Unlike several celebrities who have jetted in — and often out just as quickly — of the apparel business using their names and not talent to build brands, Beckham has been more under wraps in her approach. Her low-key presentations are counter to some of the over-the-top runway shows thrown by other luminaries. Madonna and Jennifer Lopez are a few notables who have furthered her cause by wearing her dresses. Asked if she had any words of wisdom for Lindsay Lohan, who is now pitching in at Ungaro, Beckham said: “Goodness, I don’t think I could give anybody any advice. I’m only in my fourth season. I think there is room for everybody and I always say good luck to everybody. I don’t really pay attention too much to what anybody else is doing except for myself. Obviously, I am aware. I’m not being stupid. Everybody is doing their thing and that’s cool.”

Despite being a favorite paparazzi target, Beckham said she doesn’t get sidetracked by what the weeklies print. (Recent reports chronicled her bunion problems.) “I pay absolutely no attention to the tabloids. For me, it’s always fun to look at the pictures — ‘Do I like my hair there? Don’t I like my hair there?’ but that’s pretty much where it ends.…I take it with a pinch of salt. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time now. Living in America, people are less obsessed with tabloids. I don’t read the weekly magazines that come out. I don’t have any interest in that, to be completely honest. Most of the time it is such a load of drivel that I think it’s a waste of time to read it, that I would rather put my energy into something positive.”

Beckham said she prefers to use her creative energy in other directions. At the request of Net-a-porter.com, she developed a 21st-century virtual store appearance with a walk-on cameo on the cover, audio commentary on the collection and tips about how to wear it within the site’s weekly magazine. The site’s founder, Natalie Massenet, said, “Her style resonates [with our shoppers] on many levels — from the look, which is chic and timeless, to the fit, which, thanks to her exacting eye, focuses on flattering silhouettes.”

While a few fashion friends have offered occasional advice from a business standpoint, Beckham insisted she handles all design decisions. Asked if she ever bounces ideas off her friend Roland Mouret, she said, “I have utmost respect for Roland. I think he is incredibly talented. I love what he does. He’s a great businessman. When I very first started working on the dresses, he gave me advice when it came to putting my team together. He doesn’t have anything to do with the design of anything that I do. But he taught me about how to turn my dreams into reality, if you like. He told me I needed a production manager — he helped with that side of things. I do what I do, and he does what he does, and it’s incredibly separate.”

Like Beckham, Mouret has a joint venture with Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment, which also has Fashionair.com in its portfolio, among other things. Aside from creating the Spice Girls, Fuller is also the business manager for Beckham and her husband. “American Idol” is one of the TV programs Fuller has created and produced.

Interestingly, as high powered as Beckham has become, her schoolgirl days of being bullied inadvertently helped shape the businesswoman she now is. “I’ve always been driven. I was mentally and physically bullied when I was at school and that gave me a very thick skin.…The only reason for me bringing that up is I have always been a fighter,” she said. “I have always had to work very, very hard with everything I do. That is just my work ethic. That’s just me. That’s my DNA.”

THE TIMES 14.09.2009

New York Fashion Week: Victoria Beckham's new collection. Posh gets relaxed - and a bit more playful

There are very few designers with the time — or the inclination — to sit among an admittedly tiny audience of critics and describe each outfit as it comes down the catwalk. But more than any other designer, Victoria Beckham is the personification of her brand. “Never wear the same outfit as a model, especially when you feel crappy, I’ve been up all night,” she said chirpily, as everyone took their seats.

Yet there it was, Look 34, a black, cap-sleeved, fitted mini dress with a peplum on a tall blonde model doing that slope-y walk that all the models do in VB’s clothes. And there it was again on Victoria Beckham. Even the shoes — six inches of grey suede, concealed YSL platform — matched.

Beckham’s USP is that she is her customer. She knows when an internal power mesh is called for, when a strong shoulder tips over from fashion statement to the ridiculous. It’s all flawlessly made. “I know I came from a pop band and I’m married to a footballer, but I think the fashion industry has accepted me,” she says.

Flourishing sales suggest something’s going right. Spring has moved on: not too much — there are still plenty of corseted, knee-length dresses, this time in lemon and a shimmering cobalt blue, still with attention to the fit and the make — but she’s introduced a beautiful, long, Fortie — inspired black crepe evening dress with a train and mesh-cased jewels scattered across its padded shoulders, the peplumed silhouette and shorter, looser styles, with spray-painted prints. One looked as comfortable and easy as a wrapped towel — although, as she explained, it had an internal corset to keep it in place.

Like her own style, which is more relaxed these days (the mussed-up hair helped), the collection is becoming more playful. She has been meeting her customers, learning what they like. That’s why the most expensive piece, a sheer, handspun French lace fit and flare black dress (around £3,500), which was shown with a black bra and knickers, will come with a tube dress that can be worn separately. “Two dresses for the price of one” pointed out Beckham. Mind you, she’ll be wearing it with just the underwear.

Lisa Armstrong

THE TIMES LUXX 05.09.2009

Queen V

As Brand Beckham she’s been plugging other designers for a decade; now Victoria Beckham’s transition to creative force in the fashion world is complete.

If not exactly a war of attrition, then Victoria Beckham’s conquest of the world of fashion has certainly been a long campaign. It began with a runway appearance in London Fashion Week back in 2000 and, since then, she’s been a “face of” (Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs), done more catwalk (in Milan, for Cavalli), while her advertising double act with husband David sent sales of Mr Armani’s undies through the roof.

The media haven’t always been sure whether to carp or to co-opt her, as a guest fashion editor (Harper’s Bazaar) or cover star – most notably her recent nailing of not one, not two but three Vogue covers (British, Indian and Russian) inside 12 months.  But these days, the buzz about Victoria Beckham isn’t her appearance in other people’s campaigns, wearing other people’s clothes; it’s about her own collection of dresses, which is why Luxx invited her to pose for this celebrity photograph.

They’re glam, Victoria’s frocks, they’re curvy and they sell like hot cakes, despite costing as much as Givenchy et al.  Fashion editors like them, almost despite themselves.  Perhaps even more impressive, girls shopping with their mums – that most critical of shopping companions – are won over by the quality and the finish.  Victoria Beckham – who knew? LX.

Victoria Beckham Collection costs from £920 to £4,990, at Harrods, Selfridges and Net-a-porter.com Portrait Alexi Lubomirski Report James Collard.