It’s a big week for Victoria Beckham, whose eagerly awaited Netflix documentary is released on Thursday (given her scene-stealing turn in David’s 2023 doc, expect good things). But first, there was the matter of her SS26 show, which she presented at Paris Fashion Week on Friday.
Participating in the documentary process helped inform the collection, Beckham explained backstage. ‘It really did force me to look back to when I was growing up,’ she said. ‘My relationship with clothes and now, looking at Harper, who’s 14, and her relationship with clothes’.
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Tapping into the instinctiveness of exploring, developing and expressing one’s personal style, Beckham presented a polished-yet-playful riff on the coming-of-age wardrobe. Slip dresses were smocked with rosette-like gatherings; lingerie underpinnings became asymmetric camis and slips; languid, tailored trousers suspended from georgette basques – a nod to Beckham’s memories of pulling her tights high on the waist and tucking in her school shirt (‘Didn’t everyone do that?!’).
Oversized suiting – for which Beckham is her own best ambassador, wearing her slouchy trouser suit with a white T-shirt (‘I’m always on the quest for a perfect T-shirt in summer’) – could have been nicked straight from a particularly well-dressed father. Grungy lumberjack overshirts and cotton-canvas parkas had the comforting familiarity of hand-me-downs, and the thrill of shrugging on a crush’s jacket.
The irony integral to Beckham’s work as a designer is that as her brand has grown in confidence and weight, she has found the freedom to become a little more undone. It worked brilliantly here: pieces were deliberately creased and crushed in ‘a nod to really loving your clothes'. And those airbrushed, almost graffitied slips? Hand-sprayed by team Beckham. ‘Last week we literally had a tent in the back garden where we were hand spraying’.
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One of Beckham’s biggest strengths is her graft and she spoke about being engaged and inspired by being in the atelier. ‘As I'm learning, my team is learning as well. Each season, it's about really challenging ourselves’.
Still, challenging themselves doesn’t have to translate to challenging to wear. ‘I think I've always looking at what my brand codes are and as much as we want to expand and try new things, I'm still really considering who I am, what my customer wants, my brand DNA,’ she said. ‘Everything I put on the catwalk is to be worn. It’s elevating wearable garments as much as we can’.
This article was first seen on ELLE UK.