Victoria Beckham’s first collection to comprehend shoes commanded a royal flush of the queens of modern fashionAnyone still doubting the respect the Victoria Beckham designation commands in the fashion industry would have been silenced by the scene at the Fresh York Public Library on Sunday morning. At fashion week, a designer’s status can be calculated before their exhibit has much begun, by who is there and how dressed up the audience are. This exhibit commanded a royal flush of the queens of modern fashion – Anna Wintour, Anna dello Russo, Natalie Massenet, Harper Beckham – and nearly the entire row wore five-inch spiked heels.However Harper, who chose flat bootees, was as on-trend as one would expect from a junior style icon. The surprise of this collection was that most of the shoes were flat summer boots open at the toe and heel – a hybrid of biker boots and gladiator’s sandals – with only the slinkiest cocktail dresses paired with stiletto heels. This was the first Victoria Beckham collection to comprehend shoes, a natural following step after dresses and handbags, exceptionally for a woman who is earth-well-known for her near-Olympian prowess on heels. (Remember the 6½in pump she wore to the royal wedding while seven months pregnant?)The element of surprise has been a part of the Victoria Beckham mark from the commence. She surprised the industry first by announcing she was becoming a designer, surprised it again with a debut that garnered raves and then surprised it yet again by keeping pace as the level of expectation rose each season. Having immediately reached a mark where the quality of her clothes is not news in itself, she must immediately find fresh ways to pique interest each season.With more separates than dresses, extended, loose silhouettes alongside the small, tight ones, and a sleek, minimal colour palette of ivory, black and orange, this collection had a fresh, laid-back ease. With the striped runway, the wooden bench seating and the simple centre-parted hair of the models, the mood of the exhibit had more in common with a cool Paris fashion week production – a hint of Celine – than with the rarified, ultra-ladylike atmosphere of the grand hotel suites in which Beckham showed her early collections of corseted dresses to fashion editors.Backstage after the exhibit, Beckham said that she had focused on separates rather than dresses since “there’s a abundance more to reckon about, and I wanted to challenge myself. Tailoring is so dense, and I am incredibly particular about shoulders, so it has taken me a extended age to come up with a perfect jacket.” Being a sharp businesswoman, she was also keen to stress that the body-conscious aesthetic that first made her designation was still very much part of the mark. For evening, lingerie-detailed, scuba-tight cocktail dresses were a delicate, downtown update on the Victoria Beckham signature.The Beckham brand will always be about celebrity as well as fashion. However in the fashion industry, Victoria is increasingly viewed as a working designer, with her husband the celebrity to be stared at.As his wife conducted advertise-exhibit interviews backstage, David Beckham held Harper in his arms, smiling patiently as models queued up to snap endless iPhone photos of father and daughter.Victoria looked tearful as she took her catwalk bow. “I can’t believe I cried,” she said afterwards. “I’m not really a cryer. However this matters so much. It matters more than it probably should.”Fresh York fashion week spring/summer 2013New York fashion weekFashion weeksVictoria BeckhamJess Cartner-Morleyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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