Victoria Beckham’s 50th birthday year got off to a somewhat flat start, after the designer suffered a fracture that left one foot encased in a medical boot and the other shrouded in a singular Nike Air Jordan. The high-heel devotee, who had previously tried to style out a solo Alaïa Le Coeur pump with an orthopaedic cast and crutches, was forced to temporarily retire her beloved Saint Laurent Chicas and Balenciaga pantaboots and succumb to life in the slow lane. This, as we all know, is not the MO of a woman who famously cannot concentrate in flats.
No matter. The brief hiatus in VB’s stiletto career does not reflect the fact that, at 50, Beckham has never looked better. “But she’s hardly been out!” you might cry, forlorn at the absence of her signature sign offs (“Kisses XX”) on Instagram, save for snippets posted from Beckham family holidays, including a recent bunny-eared Easter weekend in Miami. This is precisely the point. Victoria, the boss of a fashion brand now reportedly on the path to profitability, is busy. The make-up mogul is launching new “everyday” and “editorial” products, setting up “fragrance suites” and trialling “cleansing protocols” under the umbrella of Victoria Beckham Beauty; she’s expanding her made-in-Italy eyewear range; she’s parenting four children; and she’s working out more than humanly possible while additionally working out how to style a medical boot.
Beckham’s uniform reflects all this. So successful is her personal brand – all high-waisted, wide-leg trousers, skinny belts, shoulder-robing blazers, silk shirts, slip dresses and elegant-yet-vertiginous heels – that people are investing in Victoria Beckham, the woman, and all the various arms of her company. Victoria is not a conceptual designer, spouting off rarefied, intellectual references and spinning yarns for hungry journalists peddling column inches. She knows what women want because, as a one-time face of Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs and Emporio Armani underwear, a runway model for Maria Grachvogel and Roberto Cavalli, and one fifth of Britain’s most successful girl-power pop export in the ’90s, she has seen it all. Beckham has done her time as a WAG, she’s relocated from West London to Miami and back again and now reenergises in the Cotswolds. Somewhere along the way – between Baden-Baden and the London Olympics perhaps – she was granted national treasure status. “I’ve proved that if you really work hard and believe in yourself, the sky’s the limit,” Victoria, who maintains she was never the best at anything, told British Vogue ahead of her 50th, “I always say dream big, and then dream even bigger.” We’ve collectively been behind her the whole way.
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Beckham is totally unique in the fact that we know more about her life than we do those of all other fashion designers, because we have additional access to her through the significant combined social reach of her family. VB is the first to poke fun at herself, and her willingness to embrace being an embarrassing mum, as well as a committed businesswoman, is a wonderfully disarming quality. We have watched her evolve from the double denim and his and hers leathers, the Von Dutch caps, hot pants and Birkin phase, the Roland Mouret dresses… and yet we still lap up every throwback. It’s all a part of her social currency and, accordingly, there will be more tongue-in-cheek logo tees, faux-serious paparazzi struts and silly home videos as her empire grows. Beckham’s business nous should not be underestimated because of this. At 50, she knows exactly what has shaped her and exactly where she’s heading next.
