Victoria Beckham Resort 2022 Collection

Victoria Beckham is merging her two lines into one affordable brand. “We’ve spoken so much over the last 18 months about our wardrobe, how we want to shop, how we want to spend, and there’s a real sweet spot there,” she said on a video call from her Dover Street store in London. “If I was going shopping, I wouldn’t know where I’d go to get really desirable clothes at an affordable price point.” The new brand, which amalgamates her pricey ‘Victoria Beckham’ line with her accessible diffusion line, ‘Victoria, Victoria Beckham,’ will cut the designer’s former price point by 40% and bet on a new sense of “ease” for the post-pandemic fashion climate. She will design four collections a year and achieve the new prices by challenging mills and working with new factories.

As of the pre-spring collection she released today, 60% of Beckham’s collection now weighs in at $700. A suit, which used to retail at $2,800, will now be $1,700, while dresses will range between $490 and $2,000—“without compromising the desirability, quality, and ready-to-wear aesthetic,” she pointed out. Since before the pandemic, Beckham has been adding categories like cosmetics and beauty to her business in a simultaneous restructuring and expansion targeted at turning around losses, which, due to her fame, make news in the mainstream press in ways most other designers are spared. But Beckham doesn’t want a beauty-funded brand with a vanity clothing project. “We want to be strong in ready-to-wear while expanding across all categories,” her CEO Marie LeBlanc de Reynies said.

Beckham’s pre-spring lookbook eased into her first take on a more democratic proposal with a sculpted floor-length dress featuring a dramatic cut-out above the décolletage: a clear statement that “affordable” isn’t the same as demure. Tailoring and shirting, either nipped or magnified in all the interesting places, bore no sign of departing from the designer’s directionality, but she stressed that comfort had been at the forefront of the brand’s “rebirth.” Packing for New York last month, Beckham recalled, “There were certain things I pulled out of my wardrobe that just didn’t feel, in my gut, right. There was nothing wrong with them, but the world is a very different place. I want more ease now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a strong look.”