2 March 2024 |
Victoria Beckham’s AW24 collection was all about the “re-contextualisation of the familiar”. That meant Mrs Vicky B was digging through the transformative silhouettes found in her own archive and well, recontextualising them, allowing them to evolve in a way that reflected her own creative evolution.
That quintessential, Victoria Beckham ease came through in box-cut suspension trousers, elegantly suspended from belt loops, supersized pompière trousers and frothy chiffon evening wear. The construction of the pieces was notably complex. There were trousers with relaxed, low-cut crotches and elegantly draped ankle-length dresses. Classic tailoring was undone at the shoulders, which were either razor sharp or curvacious and sloped. These were imagined in reference to the act of dressing itself and “the unconscious and gestural ways” in which we carry clothes on our bodies.
Blazers, jackets, coats were deceptively simple but revealed exaggerated collars, pockets that sat just under the bust or unique criss-cross lapels. Knits were asymmetric and swathed over the body like small blankets. Crisp, dark-wash Japanese denim was constructed in the shape of form-fitting skirt suits worn with translucent tights and Mary-Janes or elongating trouser twinsets.
Beckham’s refined choice of colour palette was inspired by a painting from contemporary American artist Julian Schnabel’s Sonanbul series, which the designer has had in her home for decades. It’s something she sees almost every day, something familiar, and in the context of the clothing was echoed exquisitely in shades of white, black, brown, lemon yellow, forest green and a deep, cabernet red that arrived in the shape of a slinky silk long-sleeve gown with sculptural cutouts at the waist.
At the end of the show, which took place in the salons at Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, Vicky B came out for her final bow on crutches, and greeted her husband David Beckham with a kiss. It was a fitting, and heartfelt end to a truly beautiful show.
Photography by Christina Fragkou.
