It’s been seven years since Victoria Beckham has been in New York with a new collection. She’s not giving up Paris, where she’s staged her runway shows for the last few years, but the Big Apple has been on her mind. It wasn’t far from today’s presentation at the Centurion New York on the 55th floor of One Vanderbilt that she held her first appointments with editors and buyers back in 2008, and she’ll be back again in the fall for the premiere of the Netflix documentary series about the making of her fashion and beauty businesses.
Beckham wore pieces from the new resort collection she’s in town showing: a baby pink fine gauge knit polo tucked into the slimmest of midi skirts in sage green wool. A matching tailored jacket with a raw-edged lapel was tossed over a lounge chair, where an XL Victoria tote in burgundy leather was also perched.
She noted that this season’s palette was pulled from a 1979 Francis Bacon painting, Study for a Portrait, that was briefly exhibited in her London flagship as part of a Sotheby’s curation. The graphic floral print on silk slip dresses and on the lining of a raincoat made in collaboration with Mackintosh, meanwhile, was inspired by a Gary Hume canvas. As for silhouettes, Beckham took her design cues from dance, an early passion of hers, and the very real, everyday demands of dressing for her high-powered career and life, which is often spent in front of cameras.
Where the fall collection she presented in Paris in March leaned experimental with its fabric roll hems and pants tucked into high-heeled shoes, resort’s strong suiting and soft, fluid jersey dresses wear their user-friendliness like a badge of cool. “The first drop is around October,” Beckham said, “so it’s a real opportunity to do what we do with our tailoring and our gowns and Christmas party wear, always remembering my brand codes: of things being really considered, really flattering on the body, and giving a great silhouette.” On both the suits and the dresses, the nipped waist was a primary focus, accented with a cummerbund on the former and nipped by body defining seams on the latter.
Most surprising was the weekend wear; chenille sweatshirts, sporty bombers, moleskin pants, and jeans in a nubby, no-stretch Japanese denim aren’t the kind of things typically seen on Beckham’s runways, but they looked good here. A black flight suit paired with a little pointelle knit looked particularly New York-ish.
