20/11/2024 3:39 PM

Archiebronsonoutfit

Fashion The Revolution

Victoria Beckham Fall 2022 Ready-to-Wear Collection

As a designer-and-style-icon package solution, Victoria Beckham and her brand embody a decidedly contemporary aspect of consumer fashion: styling. Her design propositions don’t simply make their case on a runway—or, as is currently the case, in a film—but when she is actually photographed by the paparazzi wearing them herself, showcasing how she would personally style her collection. It’s a way of proposing product entirely in tune with a social media age focused on the dress sense of the individual, where you now see people copying the way Bella Hadid wears her cross-body bag, the way Kim Kardashian lets her parka slide off the shoulder, or the styling trademarks of influential image-makers like Australian Vogue’s Christine Centenera, who always lets her leggings flare out over her heels.

It’s creating a culture of fashion imbued with styling-focused details allowing the wearer to be their own stylist. To Beckham, playing with the functions of clothes is second nature, and she can’t resist getting in there, wrapping and tying and layering whatever look is standing in front of her. She demonstrated that on house models in her Paris showroom on Wednesday during an appointment for her new collection, which exemplified the idea of clothes made to be styled. While it had all the beautifully cut coats and blouses that come with the VB territory—things you just put on—the collection’s cleverness was to be found in garments purpose-made for layering or wrapping. In the case of a finely knitted onesie, for instance, Beckham said she would never wear it on its own.

“I would wear it with a dress over the top. I would wear it with a skirt over the top,” she explained. “We’ve been doing polo-neck bodies for a while, and they’re great layering pieces. They really can finish off an outfit and make it very considered. With this knitted one, you’d absolutely put a dress over the top.” Body-conscious and sensual, it created a silhouette at once sexy and fully covered from head to toe, an idea reflected in sequined dresses layered with skin-tight transparent organza dresses on top for a filtrage effect that also helped to define the shape Beckham wanted to achieve. “I always love sequins, but it’s about finding a new, fresh way of doing them by either putting the organza or knitwear over the top. It’s a refined superhero sequin,” she said.