“It’s A Big Deal For Me”: Victoria Beckham On Her Paris Fashion Week Debut For S/S'23

This season marked Victoria Beckham’s first-ever show in Paris. Her collection demonstrated all the knowledge she has accumulated during her ten-plus years as a fashion insider – and all the ambition she still harbours. She filled the cloisters of the church within Val-de-Grâce with a haunting aria from Madame Butterfly and layered it with a throbbing, ticking, pungent beat by Chromatics. Then, she flexed her subversive and highly sexual muscle in complex dress constructions and deconstructed tailoring that showed new sides to her brand.

Beckham’s French fashion debut was an ambitious, dramatic and quite sexual experience, which spoke volumes of her excitement for fashion. Anders Christian Madsen spoke to her before the show.

Here we are, the Princess of Paris!

Oh, wow! It’s been three years since we did a show. In the middle of the pandemic when we re-strategising the business and building the design team, I remember saying to myself: “If I ever have the opportunity to do another show, I want to really enjoy it.” I spent so many times getting stressed and not really enjoying the process. So, we have all really, really enjoyed this process. I have a great design team. I feel like this has been a flag-in-the-sand moment for the brand.

What’s new?

Obviously, being respectful to the brand codes, I feel like we’re also being engaging with a new, younger customer as well when you look at a lot of these pieces. There are a lot of dresses in the collection, which I’m really excited about. Things feel perfectly complicated.

What does that mean?

It’s a lot of craft but it looks very effortless. There’s an ease with the collection, but you can see that there’s a lot of work. They’re bias-cut, very feminine, very sexy dresses. We’re not burying ourselves under lots of layers. I think it’s a neater silhouette.

It’s quite undressed, isn’t it?

I think the way we’ve styled it is quite undressed. The tailoring is interesting: lots of transparent fabric, lots of showing the construction. When you look at the first exit it’s very much a Victoria Beckham silhouette, but when you go through the show it feels very fresh and new.

Let’s talk about your approach to sexy. I think this collection reflects so well how your idea of sexy has evolved over the years, from way back to now.

It’s an evolution of all of that. It’s jeans and jacket but it’s very, very considered.

It feels kind of Belgian in that intellectual fashion way…

Well, she’s quite intellectual. Quite cool. Quite subversive.

Tell me about the tasselled skirts and bags.

Harper fell in love with the bags. We always say we like to have an element of fun in the collection. This skirt is four kilos of tassels. We spent a lot of time restructuring the atelier and we’ve got some incredible talent. It’s a lot about technique this season.

Do you feel like you have to be craftier now that you’re showing in Paris?

No, it’s that it’s been three years of really missing the shows, and we’ve learnt a lot. Working with the new design team is really inspiring.