“Be my Valentine?” Tim Blanks asked Victoria Beckham backstage after her show yesterday, held in the vaulted neo-renaissance hall of Cipriani in downtown New York. She clutched a bouquet of powder-pink roses from another admirer against her grey cashmere turtleneck. Everything at her fall/winter 16 was about intimacy and warmth — with a light touch.
Her goal, she explained, was refining the look she has honed over the years, both on her runway and off. And the central idea was corset dresses, items which Beckham began acquiring long before she started designing them (see: her boned ivory wedding dress, and numerous iconic Spice Girls stage outfits).
Dresses explored various possibilities for hourglass silhouettes: The first look, a figure-hugging sheath in gently frayed plaid wool, was assembled cleverly in sections that left sections of torso exposed beneath a bustier top. Panels of alternating horizontal and vertical stripes on luscious-looking rib-knit dresses highlighted the waist. And a recurring combination of tight elongated bodice with full balloon-hem skirt upgraded the traditional hourglass shape to something new and more modern.
Worn over the top were the kind of first-class coats Victoria Beckham has been nailing for eight years. They came in navy tasseled wool (loose and open-fronted), petrol-blue with oversized pockets for stuffing cold hands in, emerald and black harlequin diamonds, and a brown and orange tweed adorned with shiny fat black buttons. Rounded out with buckled babouche-like shoes, the look was chic (of course) and also faintly exotic.
Beckham will open her second store in March, in Hong Kong, and yesterday’s offering demonstrated exactly why her label is primed for expansion. “This is a big step,” she acknowledged backstage. When asked if she might venture in men’s and children’s wear soon, she responded, “I’d love to at some point, for sure. But we’ve got quite a lot going on. If I put that on my team right now…!” She trailed off and laughed sweetly. But don’t let her fool you: VB is ready to take over the world. Her Valentine’s Day plans, she joked, involved working on her sales plan.
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Jason Lloyd Evans