The fashion designer and former Spice Girl talks business and family in a new interview with 'Vogue' Australia.
Victoria Beckham is opening up in a new interview.
Gracing the cover of Vogue Australia for its November issue, the fashion designer opens up about her career and why she decided to leave the Spice Girls.
The British brunette, 44, celebrated the 10-year anniversary of her label and she's not slowing down.
“What I’ve accomplished within 10 years is far more than I could have dreamed,” she tells the mag. “I feel like I’ve been doing this a lifetime. I live and breathe this brand seven days a week: I never switch off, I never go on holiday and turn my phone or email off. This is my fifth child.”
The world was first introduced to Beckham in the early '90s as Posh Spice, and although she's thankful for the Spice Girls era, she always knew fashion was her long-term goal.
“I always wanted to do fashion, so I was lucky that music was never my main passion. For the other girls it was. Every day someone says: ‘Are you going on tour? You’re the one who’s stopping it.’ For me, there was always something else I wanted to do," she shares. "Plan B, phase two. Even when I was in the group, on tour, I was always more interested in not just the costumes but the lighting and the set design. It was never just about getting on stage and dancing around.”
Beckham recounts the moment she realized she wanted to leave music for fashion when she saw Elton John perform.
“I was with Elton John this weekend and I told him: ‘You’re the reason why I stopped the Spice Girls.’ I went to see him in Vegas doing The Red Piano, where David LaChapelle curated the most incredible show with him, and I remember sitting there very near to the front and looking at him singing those songs he’d sung time after time, year after year, and his passion and his enjoyment was incredible, even after all that time," she recalls. "And a few nights later, I was on stage at Madison Square Garden with the Spice Girls and I thought: ‘It’s almost like a waste that I’m given this opportunity. I appreciate the time I’ve had with the girls, but I don’t have what Elton can have after all these years.’ There was nothing there, other than that my kids were in the audience and I wanted them to see Mummy doing the Spice Girls.”
Beckham recently opened a flagship store on Dover Street in London and a new multi-story HQ office, and now her eponymous line is valued at over $130 million -- proving she successfully transitioned from pop star to fashion designer.
“There was a way in the industry of doing things,” she continues. “I knew there were rules I had to abide by, but I wanted to be entrepreneurial and find different ways of doing things. I was a pop star who turned into a fashion designer and I didn’t want to do things the same way everyone else was doing them. And probably because I was a little naive, I wasn’t scared to take on those challenges in my own way.”
Although Beckham has made a name for herself as a designer, she can't seem to shed her Posh persona (not that anyone would want her to!) -- it even has already made an impression on her young daughter, Harper.
“While we were on holiday, Spice World was on heavy rotation on the iPad," she says. "When I filmed that, they made me wear a little army dress instead of the combat pants everyone else was wearing and I was really upset at the time because my weight throughout the Spice Girls went up-down-up-down and I really didn’t want to wear a tight little camouflage dress. But now Harper looks at it and she finds it really hilarious. ‘Mummy, why are you wearing that mini-dress?’ You have a whole other appreciation for that movie when you watch it years later.”
See her whopping 14 engagement-style rings:
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