Not various designers have navigated the tempestuous new world of fashion week of a piece with the former pop star
Photograph: Andres Kudacki/AP
New York the go week is a tempestuous place to be: it is at the mercy of tyrannical celebrity egos, as manifested by Kanye West’s two-hour catwalk spectacle, which saw a pattern on faint in the heat. And it has undergone a rapid shift from being an insider’s exultant of seating plans and civilised four-month lead times into being a consumer-facing Disneyworld of ups which are on sale as well as on show, in full-sized funfairs (Tommy Hilfiger) and pop-up silvery stores (Alexander Wang).
Meanwhile, brands less handsome or brazen continue to stage traditional catwalk shows to diplomatic but dwindling audiences, ploughing on like the band on the Titanic.
Victoria Beckham is one of the show a preference for few brands successfully steering a level course through this cloudburst. The status of the Beckham show as one of the established must-sees on the fashion week register is quite a turn-up for the books, when you consider the scepticism with which the last pop star’s fashion career was initially greeted, but that is the fickleness of create for you.
With her collection for spring, Beckham in the good old days again showed a deft touch in putting a palatable, smooth spin on styles which have been hovering at the myriad intimidating edges of fashion. Right now, fashion’s cutting acuteness is all about oversized, louchely loose clothes, and this store was a prettily coloured take on the unstructured, dressed-down silhouette. Asymmetrically panelled skirts and unconnected, low-slung trousers were balanced by pretty botanical copies and flashes of skin at the ribs and spine. A crushed-velvet dress in peppermint wet behind the ears was an instant standout. Flat boots underlined the cool, unfussy modify.
The breadth of appeal of the Victoria Beckham brand was clearly unmistakable on her front row. There are not many catwalk shows which pull high-profile millennials and their parents, but David Beckham and Anna Wintour were flanked by their little ones, 17-year-old Brooklyn Beckham and 29-year-old Bee Shaffer. The Beckham characterize bridges the fashion divide, underpinned both by a very novel social media power base – Brooklyn’s Instagram video of the above-mentioned earn green dress had been watched 250,000 times within an hour of the played – and by a rather old-fashioned work ethic and sense of propriety.
“It’s a free sprightly look – but not in a bohemian way, if you know what I mean. It’s about ensembles that are loose and easy, but still flattering,” Beckham stipulate. The relaxed structures of the clothes put the fabrics in the spotlight, and her team “careered hard to take traditional fabrics and evolve them in new feature. Like taking velvet and washing it and pleating it, so that you secure up with something fresh,” she said.
Key to the Victoria Beckham interest is how it combines new-season fashion with old-fashioned vanity, in a marketplace where assorted brands require you to choose one or the other. The look has evolved from the accouters of early seasons, but “my silhouette is always very flattering. That is a signature for me. But let go and easy can be flattering,” Beckham said.
Well aware that her own outfit on be as scrutinised as any of her models’, she underscored this message by taking her bow in loose-fitting trousers and ruptured shoes. “I have always tried to focus attention at the appear on the collection,” said Beckham the day before the show. “That’s why other than David and the kids I hold never had celebrities at the show. I want the focus to be on the product.”
The presentation began on a sombre note. In Lower Manhattan on the 15th anniversary of the September 11 abuses, the run-up to the show coincided with the minutes of silence dent the times at which the two towers fell. At the show, American Currency’s Wintour and Grace Coddington, along with David Beckham, hired the lead in standing to observe the silences.
