Words taken from The Guardian - written by Jess Cartner-Morley.
Anyone still doubting the respect the Victoria Beckham name commands in the fashion industry would have been silenced by the scene at the New York Public Library on Sunday morning. At fashion week, a designer's status can be calculated before their show has even begun, by who is there and how dressed up the audience are. This show commanded a royal flush of the queens of modern fashion – Anna Wintour, Anna dello Russo, Natalie Massenet, Harper Beckham – and almost the entire row wore five-inch spiked heels.
But Harper, who chose flat bootees, was as on-trend as one would expect from a junior style icon. The surprise of this collection was that most of the shoes were flat summer boots open at the toe and heel – a hybrid of biker boots and gladiator's sandals – with only the slinkiest cocktail dresses paired with stiletto heels. This was the first Victoria Beckham collection to include shoes, a natural next step after dresses and handbags, especially for a woman who is world-famous for her near-Olympian prowess on heels. (Remember the 6½in pump she wore to the royal wedding while seven months pregnant?)
The element of surprise has been a part of the Victoria Beckham label from the start. She surprised the industry first by announcing she was becoming a designer, surprised it again with a debut that garnered raves and then surprised it yet again by keeping pace as the level of expectation rose each season. Having now reached a point where the quality of her clothes is not news in itself, she must now find new ways to pique interest each season.
With more separates than dresses, long, loose silhouettes alongside the short, tight ones, and a sleek, minimal colour palette of ivory, black and orange, this collection had a new, laid-back ease. With the striped runway, the wooden bench seating and the simple centre-parted hair of the models, the mood of the show had more in common with a cool Paris fashion week production – a hint of Celine – than with the rarified, ultra-ladylike atmosphere of the grand hotel suites in which Beckham showed her early collections of corseted dresses to fashion editors.
Backstage after the show, Beckham said that she had focused on separates rather than dresses because "there's a lot more to think about, and I wanted to challenge myself. Tailoring is so difficult, and I am incredibly particular about shoulders, so it has taken me a long time to come up with a perfect jacket." Being a sharp businesswoman, she was also keen to stress that the body-conscious aesthetic that first made her name was still very much part of the label. For evening, lingerie-detailed, scuba-tight cocktail dresses were a delicate, downtown update on the Victoria Beckham signature.
The Beckham brand will always be about celebrity as well as fashion. But in the fashion industry, Victoria is increasingly viewed as a working designer, with her husband the celebrity to be stared at.
As his wife conducted post-show interviews backstage, David Beckham held Harper in his arms, smiling patiently as models queued up to snap endless iPhone photos of father and daughter.
Victoria looked tearful as she took her catwalk bow. "I can't believe I cried," she said afterwards. "I'm not really a cryer. But this matters so much. It matters more than it probably should."
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