By Alison McGill
A look behind the seams of Victoria Beckham’s fashion business is the focus of the three-part docuseries Victoria Beckham which just dropped on Netflix. The former Spice Girl-turned-designer is not gatekeeping any secrets in this very honest look at her multi-hyphenate career.
This is actually not the first time Beckham has shared an inside look at her fabulous life. If you are a fan, you will remember the 2007 television special Victoria Beckham: Coming to America. This documented the family’s move to Los Angeles when husband David signed with the LA Galaxy. This show aired a year before Beckham started her fashion business, and it’s fascinating to see her evolution from the world’s most famous WAG to Anna Wintour-approved design powerhouse. This show was also when we came to fully realize Beckham’s razor sharp, very British wit.
In the new docuseries—which follows the lead up to the Victoria Beckham Spring 2025 show in Paris last September—Beckham shares a no-holds-barred look at her famous, and sometimes not so fabulous life. Husband David is ever present throughout (his company Studio 99 produced it), and so too are her children Romeo, Cruz and daughter Harper. Eldest son Brooklyn who currently seems to be estranged from the family is seen several times as a child, but only briefly glimpsed as an adult with his wife Nicola taking their seats for Beckham’s Paris fashion show.
What eye-opening facts did we learn from watching this docuseries? Beckham is incredibly candid about her body image struggles which date back to her teens when she began dancing. Her issues became amplified when she became famous as a Spice Girl, and the press routinely called out her weight. “I was controlling [the narrative] in an incredibly unhealthy way. When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying,” Beckham shared.
Here are six other major revelations she shared in Victoria Beckham.
1. Victoria actually designs her fashion line.
Everything you see on the Victoria Beckham runway is conceptualized by Beckham. Though she had no formal design training, Beckham was told early on by her fashion mentor, French designer Roland Mouret, in order to be successful in the business, she had to learn and understand how to do it all. “Roland saw something, I don’t know what, but we connected, and he believed in me,” explains Beckham of how Mouret taught her the basics of fashion design.
“He was very honest, and he was really tough. He didn’t care if I liked what he said or not; he just said it. He really challenged me. I don’t sketch, but I did start by draping on myself,” she reflects. “I remember standing there in the mirror, in my underwear, with Roland and just bits of fabric. And he just kept saying, ‘perfect the dress.’ He gave me the tools that I needed to create.”
2. Why Victoria’s WAG-era had to end.
Post Spice Girls breakup in 2001, Beckham admits she didn’t know who she was anymore. The young mum married to the world’s most successful footballers reinvented herself as the ultimate WAG, but it never truly represented her. “It was fun. I had big boobs, I had big hair, it was a moment in time,” she says looking back at photos of the time. “When I look back and think why, I suppose there’s an element of attention seeking. I didn’t feel creatively fulfilled, so it’s how I stayed in the conversation—from Spice Girl to WAG.”
To become serious in the fashion business, Beckham says, “we had to kill the WAG” and “become a much simpler, more elegant version of myself.”
3. Victoria was embarrassed to ask David for a business bailout.
This is the first time Beckham has spoken about her business being millions of dollars in debt for several years. By 2016 she was an award-winning designer, but despite the accolades, she was also at the helm of a sinking fashion house.
Looking back at that time, Beckham said: “There was a lot of waste. We were millions of pounds in the red. I didn’t know what to do.” She admits she hated having to talk about her business struggles with David, but she had to because he was invested. “Part of that conversation broke my heart because Victoria is a proud woman,” he shares in the series. “That was hard for both of us, because I didn’t have the money to keep doing this.”
4. Spice Girls fame contributed to Victoria’s debt.
In talking about the financial shortcomings of the Victoria Beckham brand, David is quick to point out his wife “was a lot richer” than him when they first met in 1987, and bought their first home, a sprawling manor estate in Hertfordshire famously coined ‘Beckingham Palace.’ Victoria admitted her penchant for overindulging comes from her “entertainment background,” and in her case, achieving a global level of fame and success very few attain. In 2017 businessman David Belhassen bought a third of Victoria’s fashion business and helped turn it around and focused on making the business profitable for the first time in the brand’s history.
To do this, Belhassen did a thorough review of company expenses and uncovered a shocking amount of unnecessary expenses including $70,000 a year on office plants, and $15,000 a year to have someone water them. “I needed her to understand if she was really capable of accepting what had to happen,” Belhassen shared. “For years she had people telling her what she wanted to hear.”
5. Anna Wintour repeatedly ditched Victoria’s fashion shows.
Thought she is now always seen sitting front row with the Beckham family, Vogue’s former editor-in-chief did not RSVP to an invitation until 2013.
“I knew her as a Spice Girl and we admired her style and her sense of commitment to fashion,” says Wintour in the doc. “But most of the celebrities who get involved in our world are not true designers. I thought maybe this was a hobby. Didn’t quite believe it. Victoria was one that totally proved us wrong.”
6. Victoria actually does smile…when photographed from the correct side.
“When I smile, I smile from my left because if I smile from my right, I look unwell,” Beckham shares early on in the docuseries. “So, I was smiling…but no one could see it.”
Realizing when she posed for photos with David he was always standing on the left, the couple has now reworked their photo strategy with Posh always putting her friendlier side forward.
