This Victoria Beckham collection felt kind of undecided. Preceded with a fragrance line launch and Kim Kardashian’s late arrival to the fashion show, Beckham’s spring-summer 2024 outing offered many ideas of what this brand could be. But when there are too many answers available, the picture becomes foggy. One good thing about it: the designer is finally overcoming Philo-mania (which she might replace with a Jenna-Lyons-obsession, judging by her appearance in the front row and all the big glasses the models wore), and seems to go her own, aesthetic direction(s). Beckham’s collection was founded in her teenage memories of the intense classic and contemporary ballet training that eventually got her into musical theatre. Taking her starting point in the unassuming rehearsal wardrobe of ballet, she reflected the current fashion climate’s inclination for reduction but invigorated her stripped-down silhouette with intriguing gestures of motion. Simple jersey T-shirts with droplet décolletés were suspended from wire in ways that freeze-framed the movements of ballet and injected the clothes with character. Beckham exercised the same ideas in dresses and knits worn as dresses, all quite abstract but easy to wear. She rendered the collection in the faded pastels of Degas’ ballerina works and Monet’s paintings of haystacks, as well as the metallic effects of his iterations on the Houses of Parliament. Then, the designer went for the style of British countryside. Next to boyish country tailoring and field jackets, she mirrored her idea of infusing clothes with character in the antique furnishing textiles she’d seen around old houses outside of London where she spends her weekends, from tablecloths to curtains and everything in between. They inspired the embroideries and general eccentricity of tea dresses that embodied the 1930s spirit, which lately characterises Beckham’s silhouette. As far as storytelling went, these clothes certainly had some tales to tell.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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