Victoria Beckham’s Eclectic, Eccentric A/W´23 Show

Victoria Beckham drew on influences as diverse as Grey Gardens’s Little Edie and the work of artist Solange Pessoa when creating her autumn/winter 2023 collection, unveiled at her sophomore show on the Paris schedule. Anders Christian Madsen – and almost all of the Beckhams – were there.

It was about the art of dressing up

When Victoria Beckham came out to take her bow in the cloisters of Val-de-Grâce, Giancarlo Giammetti – the 85-year-old legend who co-founded Valentino – gave her a standing applause. “The workmanship on your collection is as good as many couture shows,” he wrote on Instagram immediately after. Since she relocated her show to Paris last season, Beckham has been tirelessly toiling on the precision and rigour of her work. For her sophomore presentation in the city of couture, it paid off. Her collection was an exquisite exercise in deconstructed tailoring, abstract dress-making, and the kind of arcane cutting that makes a show stand out on a back-to-back schedule that easily blurs the vision. She dedicated it to the art of dressing up. “I used to watch my mum getting ready back in the ’80s when she’d sit at her dressing table and have Raffinee and Christian Dior’s Poison on her table. She wore shoulder pads and big hair and lots of Elnett and peplum waists. A more-is-more attitude,” she reminisced during a preview.

It was partly inspired by Grey Gardens

Since Beckham moved her show to Paris, she has been going back to the roots that ignited her love of fashion, and the roots of clothes-making itself. A new portrait of Drew Barrymore graced the invitation, revisiting her character of Little Edie – by way of Victoria Beckham garments – from the 2009 fictionalisation of Grey Gardens. “I’ve been inspired by that movie many times,” Beckham said. “I’m drawn to how eclectic and eccentric the character is, and how batshit crazy the styling was. Plus, I know Drew – our kids used to have playdates – and there’s something very honest about her character that I find really attractive.” The weird and infectious idea of Little Edie, a 54-year-old woman who lives with her mum and spends her days dressing up, inspired a collection founded in a tattered, twisted, decadent glamour: an exploration of subversion Beckham consistently pulled back into slick, modern silhouettes.

It balanced the beautiful and the pale

The Psycho soundtrack partly scored the show, setting the tone for the deliciously eeriness with which Beckham approached her dresses: pleats psychotically patchworked together into dramatic frocks, dresses that looked as though they were made entirely from tights, silky ’30s bridal gowns worn back-to-front, and an evening dress that unravelled into acrylic but very human-looking hair (inspired by the artist Solange Pessoa). Backed up by feathers poking out from lapels or scanned into a smoky plume print on dresses, it made for a constant balance between the beautiful and the pale. There was an air of customisation to the de- and reconstruction that imbued almost every look, which almost felt meta for Beckham, whose collections over the past 10 years have been a seasonal expression of her journey into fashion. Paris, it seems, has inspired in her a re-discovery of craftsmanship, expressed in hyper-modern tailoring hacked open with inverted lapels and revealed stitching.

There was a spirit of customisation

“I was never in a position to afford designer clothes so I used to really love creating what I could, playing and expressing myself in that way,” Beckham said, recalling her early discovery of customisation. “When I was at junior school and I wanted the main part in a play, I used to lie and say I had the costume at home. I didn’t, I just wanted the main part.” She’d go home and make it. “When I was at senior school, I came up with this trend of wearing two pairs of socks. They were kind of over-the-knee socks and I’d wear one pair over the knee and another pair on top, and I’d scrunch them down. The trend caught on and everyone was wearing two pairs of socks, and my sister and I used to fight every single morning for the socks. And Harper said to me last night – I kid you not – she said, ‘Mummy, I just bought some leg warmers on ASOS. I’m gonna wear them over my black tights and scrunch them down.’ I was like, oh my god… I started that trend!”

Nearly all the Beckhams were there

Bar her son Romeo, the entire Beckham clan was in attendance, with Brooklyn and his wife Nicola Peltz Beckham flying in from America. The love of customisation was clearly passed down through the genes: Cruz wore a custom VB-logo denim outfit, while Harper Seven was in a bespoke Victoria Beckham suit. For their mother – whose discovery of fashion is one of the most documented in recent history – her developing exploration of fashion is now expressed in her evolving runway proposals. “I used to push boundaries much more than I do now,” she said of her personal style. “But I think there was naivety then. Some of the things I used to wear when I was in the Spice Girls, you know… I was naïve and I didn’t really care. It was just about what I liked and what felt good and expressing myself.” Years on, she’s doing the same on a Parisian runway – only, instead of naivety, this collection was an illustration of the knowledge and confidence Victoria Beckham now embodies as a designer in Paris.