In 2007, Victoria caused quite the kerfuffle when she attended a Marc Jacobs show. Marc wrote her a letter afterward, asking her to be in his campaign, and she agreed. When she saw the photos, though, “I was horrified.” They leaned into Victoria’s public image at the time and were far from glamorous. “It was very much poking fun at me, and that’s when I realized I was a laughing stock. No one took me seriously in this industry. I knew I wanted to be a designer. I knew I had a point of view. But I also knew that I needed someone to believe in me.”
A decade later, though, she returned to the concept. Now a designer in her own right, she found herself losing her way and her DNA fading from her brand. In an effort to “put Victoria Beckham back into Victoria Beckham,” she called Juergen Teller, who’d photographed her for that Marc Jacobs campaign, and asked him to recreate it for her own brand. “When he shot me 10 years ago, the laugh was on me. But I wanted to reclaim that image for myself.”
To make it in fashion, she had to “kill the WAG”
Crucial to Victoria’s success in fashion was the designer Roland Mouret, who became an important early mentor. “Roland saw something,” Victoria remembers. “We connected and he believed in me. He was very, very honest and really, really tough.” He told her that “the enemy was fear and lack of self-esteem. To make the dream become reality, we had to kill the WAG.” Victoria complied. “I buried those boobs in Baden-Baden,” she says. “I became a simpler, more elegant version of myself.”
Her partnership with David Belhassen saved her business
In the second and third episode, Victoria speaks candidly about the difficulties she faced in the fashion business, as her independent label was scaled up rapidly from intimate presentations to blockbuster shows. She eventually found herself backed into a corner, with losses running up to the millions and David, whose financial input had been essential, unable to keep investing. “The entire house was crashing down,” she remembers. “I was losing my business. I needed outside investment. I needed someone to help me.”