London’s first digital fashion week begins today and offers an ideal opportunity to reflect where British fashion is heading and how far it has progressed.
Looking at the country’s recent history, there is a couple that includes tailored evolution: David and Victoria Beckham.
Today, Victoria’s fashion label is a reliable fashion week fixture and David is a dapper style icon, but not always. For one thing, who can forget when they go everywhere in matching clothes?
David and Victoria Beckham at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards Los Angeles. Credit: Jon Kopaloff / FilmMagic / Getty Images
In the early millennium, you cannot open a newspaper without seeing Posh and Becks’ color-coordinated approach to what we now know as #couplegoals.
During the screening of the cult film “Withnail and me” in 2001, David preferred top to bottom brown and David wore a non-recommended Matrix style trench coat.
David & Victoria Beckham, “Withnail & Me” in London, a screening in 2001. Credit: Justin Goff / UK Press / Getty Images
However, just weeks ago, it was an even more iconic coordinated fashion moment.
The super couple was the height of Beckham-mania when it came from head to toe at a Versace party in London. Victoria was about to start recording a third Spice Girls album and helped David Manchester United demand the British and European championships. Their first son, Brooklyn, was born and the couple had recently bought a cozy family mansion called the media “Beckingham Palace”.
“What were we thinking?” said David Beckham, staring at some of the clothes that matched his wife. (Justin Goff / UK Press / Getty Images) Credit: Justin Goff / UK Press / Getty Images
Often, the garments are neglected to be wildly inappropriate for the season. After all, it was mid-June (although the British summers are usually so soft, you can wear more leather without breaking the sweat). Perhaps this explained why both David and Victoria chose to drop the zippers from their pinned collars and effectively turn the smallest flashes of the skin into keyhole collars.
Still, for a very bold look, he was almost completely deprived of attitude. Stopping an English village pub for orange juice looked like a couple of gentle bikers. Even David, with floppy hair, who then completed the outfit with a pair of straight-toed loafers, did not seem convinced by the idea of the start.
That night there was a certain bruise in his eyes, as if he knew that one day he would regret the decision. And it really did.
However, Victoria was less willing to reject the past. “I never look back and deceive anything,” he told Grazia in 2018.
But perhaps more importantly: the clothes did exactly what they had to do.
Britain’s Beckhams’ obsession with fashion may have been partially fueled by tabloid disdain in the idea of the nouveau riche extravagance, but it served promotional purposes. Even the most suspicious outfits contributed to one of the most successful branding exercises of modern entertainment.
Beckhams was pictured at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle in 2018. Credit: Max Mumby / Indigo / Getty Images
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