Before she became a fashion designer, a beauty entrepreneur or even a Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham was a ballerina.
From the age of three right up until she went for her fate-changing pop audition in 1994, Beckham danced her way through classical ballet and musical theatre schools – the memories of which have inspired her latest Paris Fashion Week show.
“I was really looking at my life as a dancer, before the Spice Girls,” she explained, “and I thought about what we wore from the rehearsal studio right through to the performance.”
On the catwalk, dancewear staples were given a fresh edge using sculpting wires – pale satin was suspended into artfully draped dresses and jersey T-shirts had structured leotard-esque goutte d’eau necklines.
Beckham had trawled through her mother’s loft to find her old tutus, and took them to her design studio to reinterpret their ruffles too.
“I haven’t put these tutus on since I was about 16 years old: I had a lot of fun,” she said.
She can still do her pointe work – “It’s like riding a bike,” she laughed. “It’s been quite a while. Now when [my daughter] Harper is dancing, I love to sit and watch. When my mum pulled out the tutus, she also pulled out the pointe shoes, and Harper was very impressed when she saw me doing pointe work in the kitchen.”
The styling touches, which felt authentic and easy, also referenced the ballerina’s post-show wardrobe – flat boots appeared thrown on and undone, paired with chunky cable socks; oversized knits were thrown off the shoulder, just so. For the star who was originally inspired to pursue a pop career by the 1980 musical Fame, designing leg warmers was surely a joy.
“I remember taking tights and cutting a hole in the gusset to put your head through it,” she recalled. “That becomes like a shrug or a cardigan – this is the relationship that you as a dancer have with your clothes.”
The other thread of her “storytelling” this season, as she put it, is her country life. She and husband David have owned a home in the Cotswolds since around 2016, and the heritage checks and reworked field jackets in the collection nodded to their lifestyle there.
“The British countryside is a big part of my life,” she explained. “When I go to the countryside with my husband every weekend, we go to this lovely little antique store. I love browsing around there on a Sunday and looking at the vintage tablecloths and napkins and really appreciating the character.”
Those specific details have directly influenced the collection too, as scalloped edges and embroidered cutworks on light ecru cotton dresses.
Beckham’s show location (the salon rooms of Paris’s Hotel de Soyecourt) was scented with yet-to-be-released candles that match her new perfume range, which launched this week. She was supported by her family on the front row – David, Harper and Cruz, as well as celebrities including Pamela Anderson and Kim Kardashian.
Building brand “Victoria Beckham” to this level has been a 15-year task – in February this year, she announced for the first time that the company had turned a profit.
But from here on, she’s optimistic about its future. “I always want to better myself, and challenge myself,” she said. “I really do see fashion holding hands with beauty and now fragrance. I wanted to make sure that I had the knowledge within my beauty team [before I launched a perfume] because it’s a very competitive category. This isn’t a licence deal. This is not a celebrity fragrance. It feels like the next chapter for the brand.”