Victoria Beckham: Palm Beach polish and panache in A/W 2022 pre-collection

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jan 14, 2022

“I’m so sick of people wanting to dress in a comfortable way. I want to make an occasion out of dressing,” insists Victoria Beckham, who reveals her fall winter pre-collection 2022 on Friday, with her house well on the road to financial recovery.

 
Inspired in part by a visit to Sant Ambroeus restaurant in Palm Beach, the result was a range of snappy and sophisticated looks and one of Victoria’s most refined fashion statements.
 
“It’s a utilitarian aesthetic, but also getting plenty of leg out there. It’s about a really good bust and extending the waist and making it small,” beamed Beckham, in a preview Zoom with FashionNetwork.com.

Color is at the heart of the collection, referencing the vibrant oranges and soft mottled greens of the Sant Ambroeus Florida outpost.
 
Beckham revealed her pre-coll in a sleek lookbook and in a private preview with models, from her office at headquarters in Hammersmith, London.
 
“The interiors were a starting point, but this is also a collection with lots of twisted details were everything is very considered,” explained the UK designer.

 
Stand-outs include some great flirtatious taffeta dresses; and stylish and lengthy evening dresses in jersey. Often cut deep at the back, as the model pirouetted to reveal just that.
 
“It’s about sucking in the right parts and extending the right parts,” she laughed.
 
Her light-hearted patter recalled Victoria’s earliest presentations in New York, when she would invite a dozen editors to an Upper East Side mansion and regale them with her dry wit and self-deprecating optimism.
 
“I miss doing that and not being able to talk my way through the clothes, when people can see and feel the fabrics and textures,” confessed Beckham. 
 
The designer is keen to return to the catwalk, but due to the constant changes in pandemic policy as new variants appear, has still not decided whether to stage an event in next month’s London Fashion Week.
 
“The good thing about Covid is that it has allowed us all to march to the beat of our own drums. By being very honest and very real,” asserts Beckham, dressed in a heritage fabric windowpane suit jacket, lilac silk shirt and mustard pants.

 
The collection also featured lots of black; lots of texture; some great elevated denim sourced from Japan; and an aviation military influence – with multiple new polo neck bodies worn underneath an officers’ shirt. And, a brand-new VB monogram.
 
‘I am not someone who loves branding much – even in the '90s when people were wearing branding all the time. But what I like about our monogram is that it’s not too obvious and in our face. Our VB monogram actually looks like a very tasteful print,” she insists, as a model appears in a silk crepe, very wearable and crease-free dress.
“I’m sick of travelling and being in hotels where they don't steam a dress!

“Above all, I wanted to lift the bum to make you feel you are a very sexy person. Maybe I have been spending too much time in Miami!” chuckled Beckham, who spent Christmas in Florida, where husband David has his football franchise Inter Miami, and second son Romeo is a junior player. 

 
“The boys are getting older, and our youngest Cruz in boarding school. While Harper is at home with mummy and daddy. She is such a sweet and kind child and it’s great to see her grow up,” says mummy Victoria.
 
After a couple of years of painful right-sizing, following the acquisition of a 30% stake by French luxury vehicle NEO Investment Partners in Beckham’s brand, the UK fashion brand is rapidly moving in the right direction.
 
In the most recent 12 months, the house cut losses in half, whittling the red ink down to £8.7 million, buoyed by fast-growing sales of Victoria Beckham Beauty.
 
As part of the new strategy Beckham has merged its two lines and the customer is responding to lower price point. Plus, Beckham’s launch of her own fully-owned beauty collection has quickly gained traction.

 
“Beauty has been an enormous and most wonderful success in the past 15 months. I have the best product development team, very focused on clean beauty but without compromising in terms of performance. And our packaging is beautiful. We now have four times the active customers we had last year! It’s a very honest collection I have exactly what I want in my make-up bag,” cheered Beckham, sporting a new more flouncy hairstyle.
 
“You should see me in Miami. Now there, my hair is really massive!” she laughs.