Victoria Beckham is our Entrepreneur of the Year

I’d already read about the bob. It’s been in all the magazines. That’s what happens when Victoria Beckham gets a haircut. It’s looking particularly wash’n’go casual on the morning we meet in her family’s London home. There’s a hint of make-up to enhance a healthy glow. Fifty looks good on her. She parks herself, cross-legged, in front of the fireplace in the substantial living-room. She’s barefoot because she hasn’t found shoes to suit the rather special Alaïa jeans she’s wearing, Alaïa and Balenciaga being the only exceptions she allows to the wear-her-own-brand rule. Despite it being another dreary day of this year’s misbegotten summer, it’s not noticeably chilly, but there’s a fire burning in the grate. David likes a fire in this room.

Victoria’s humour is as dry as ever. “When my trainer says to me in the morning, ‘Have you had your carbs?’ I say, ‘Well, I had half a bottle of sake that was unfiltered, which basically means there’s a bit of rice in it.’” Such drollery bodes well for the docuseries she’s two days into shooting for Netflix; an obvious successor to the wildly successful, Emmy-winning show that focused on her husband. She reels off the production schedule. “They’ll come to Paris to cover the show and the lead-up. Then they’ll follow me to LA, because I have beauty work to do over there, and then to New York, where I’m doing some things for the CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America]. Then Miami with the beauty team, and next year, to Grasse in Provence, creating the next fragrance.”

The emphasis is clearly different from the access-all-areas-ish aspect that made her husband’s four-part documentary such a streaming smash. “It’s slightly more targeted on the entrepreneur, the designer of the brand,” Victoria confirms. “It’s not going to be as personal. I realise that I am a bit of a travelling circus, even when I’m at work, but this is very fashion-focused. And, obviously, there’ll be elements of the kids, you know – Harper’s going to come in on Monday and do her fitting for the show. So they’ll film that. But it’s really shining a light on the business, especially for America. That’s the main reason for doing this.”

About that business… It’s almost two decades since Victoria debuted her fashion line, premiering a slick, tailored, contemporary aesthetic in New York. The acclaim wasn’t exactly universal, but the way she launched, personally talking key fashion-media outlets through her collection, underscored her level of engagement. There was something charming in her approach, as if she was testing the waters, eager to learn from experts. It’s been that way ever since. Victoria explored beauty products via two best-selling capsule collections with Estée Lauder before she launched her own range in 2019. At some point, knowledge becomes wisdom, and she has grown wise in the ways of fashion and beauty.

Satin dress, Victoria Beckham

And of her media presence, too. Although, even if Victoria’s always included the children in her evolving story, she sounds almost surprised that they didn’t have more questions after David’s programme aired. “It was funny, actually,” she reflects. “Cruz was like, ‘I didn’t realize that Dad was so good at football.’ You forget it was a long time ago. They were always at the games, but they were really little, and too young to understand.” Brooklyn did ask, however, about the most viral moment in the show, the Rolls-Royce school-run scene. He wondered who came up with the idea and how many takes they did. Mum took mild offence. “David was in the other room watching the monitor, and then he put his head in the door. It was not rehearsed. Like the dancing in the tent. None of it was rehearsed.”

Even the hard-to-watch retread of their dad’s very public pillorying after the 1998 World Cup didn’t elicit much comment from the children. “I mean, when it happened, David was the same age that Romeo is now,” says Victoria. “That’s a lot for a 22-year-old. When you’re in it, there’s that sink-or-swim feeling, and you just get on with it. And we had each other, and the rest is history. But the thought of my Romeo having to go through it… I don’t know how he would handle that. I don’t know how anyone would handle that. But we didn’t have a choice.”

Those sequences spoke volumes about the Beckhams’ relationship, and how that period in their lives informed the front they presented to the world. “You have to go through those times to make you, ultimately, who you are,” Victoria says. “We’ve kind of figured out how to be quite discreet, which is just how we want to conduct our lives right now. I suppose it used to be fun to go out and be chased by paparazzi walking down Bond Street – and you would dress knowing you were going to get that. I don’t want that any more.”

Lace body; matching skirt; matching bra; leather heels, all Victoria Beckham

She’s happy that the media have been made more accountable, although she is still mercilessly scrutinised and judged. Believe what you read, and you’d think she spends every waking second defending the sanctity of Brand Beckham. When she tells me, “You’re getting me raw at the minute,” she’s talking about her make-up, but it could equally be a reminder that amused self-deprecation masks hyper-sensitivity. Still, she insists she doesn’t pay much mind anymore to what’s written about her. “I’ve been doing this too long. I suppose I did when I was growing up but, nowadays, there’s just too much going on; too busy; too many kids to worry about.” I mention Tom Bower – whose recent tell-all book The House of Beckham was branded “an epic symphony of snide” by The Guardian and she asks, “Who’s that?” I’ll take the query as genuine, rather than another instance of that aforementioned dry humour. Later in our conversation, she has a rather more succinct comment on her attitude. “I woke up at 50, and I gave a shit less.”

Still, Victoria has a born pop-culture icon’s killer instinct for using her life as the stuff of her art and, most recently, her new fragrance, 21.50 Rêverie. David and Victoria were in Java on a rare romantic getaway in 2001, when he surprised her one night with dinner in the middle of paddy fields, illuminated by thousands of candles. The time of the surprise? 21.50. And her state of mind at the time was definitely dreamy. (“The plush trace of plum on the lips of another” is one of the perfume’s promises.) To launch the fragrance and her new-season collection, she wanted a French location as romantically evocative as those faraway fields. Again, expert input helped out: Lucien Pagès, her prodigious PR guy in Paris, suggested the magnificent Château de Bagatelle, constructed in 1777 in the Bois de Boulogne as a bijou party house for Louis XVI’s brother.

And how timely was such a grand gesture, at a moment when Victoria can finally counter the carping business stories with a turnaround? In 2023, sales in her fashion and beauty business jumped 52 per cent, to £89m, compared to £59m the previous year. That significantly narrowed the previous year’s overall losses from £900,000 to £200,000. The most gratifying news for her is that the fashion division is in profit at last. “It’s a huge accomplishment. The company has been through so much over the last 17 years – ups, downs, restructuring… it’s been quite the journey. So, finally, to be able to say we’re profitable is something I’m so proud of, because it’s not an easy industry, and it’s getting harder and harder. To be able to say that I’m selling clothes right now, when you look at how luxury is struggling…”

Satin dress, Victoria Beckham

There’s smart strategising with prices, and creating a closer connection between the catwalk and the commercial collections has clearly paid off. But, for Victoria, the real turning point was two years ago, at her first show in Paris, with a move designed to further elevate the brand and its position within the industry. She arrived with a new creative team. It started off as terrifying, she remembers, but turned into a pinch-me moment. “Whenever I did a collection, I’d always think, it was because of this person, or it was because of that person,” she says. “But when I went to Paris, what I realised was: I must have something to do with this. And I actually gave myself a little pat on the back.”

It’s that level of insecurity paired with an obsession with fashion that has made her so ready to learn from anyone who could show her the way. No arrogance, no ego, and the instincts to zero in on the best stylists (such as Jane How), the best fragrance nose (Jérôme Epinette) and the best skincare scientist (Professor Bader). She claims she stalked the latter until he agreed to contribute his formulae to her products. “The more you use it, the less you need it,” she rhapsodises about the under-eye concealer pen she just created with him. I’m looking a bit baggy, so I’m seduced by her enthusiasm. David has already surrendered. “He likes a click pen,” she says.

Significantly, Victoria isn’t expanding her reach via the traditional route, licensing her name to a giant. This is all her, and her entrepreneurial instinct. For their 25th wedding anniversary in July, David commissioned the LA artist Ed Ruscha to recreate his 1990 painting Woman on Fire for Victoria. The original work has always had a particular significance for her. “When I think about the past 17 years… I mean, there was a point when this brand was all fires, and every day we were putting them out. But when I created the fragrance, that’s when I believe that we turned from a brand into a house. I’ve spent years building the damn foundations. Now I can start really building the house.”

A random thought surfaces. “A friend was talking to one of the kids recently, and they said I was a builder,” Victoria muses. “And that’s what I am.”

The December/January issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, celebrating our Women of the Year, is on newsstands from 6 November.