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“I’m in Miami,” Victoria Beckham tells me when we speak on a sticky early summer’s afternoon. She’s in work mode, immersed in back-to-back calls and product testing. “It’s such a busy time at the moment that it doesn’t really make any difference to me what the weather is like, because I’m indoors working anyway.”
I’m one of the first to speak to Beckham about what might be her most anticipated launch yet: The Foundation Drops, a product she has been developing, and secretly wearing, for years. It’s not what I, and I’m sure everyone else, expected.
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The format is not in a weighty tube or a traditional pigmented balm, but rather a light-as-air, shake-to-mix drop formula. It feels radical, not because it’s maximal, but because it’s minimal. “We created The Foundation Drops for [everyday makeup] minimalists like me,” she says. “The formula melts into skin for a naturally flawless complexion and nourishes with Augustinus Bader’s TFC8 technology as I wear it. This is a foundation that feels like nothing, but truly does everything.”
Beckham is emphatic that this has been a long time coming. “When I started Victoria Beckham Beauty, I actually wanted to start with a foundation,” she recalls. “But I realized that I wasn’t ready for it. I wanted something really innovative that hadn’t been done before… A lot of people claim to have skin-care science within their foundation, but I wanted to do it in a meaningful way.”
She pauses and interrupts herself, wanting to make an important point. “I struggled with my skin throughout my entire life,” she says. “When I say I used to have bad skin, there was a time when I couldn’t put a pin between the acne on my face. I know how it feels not to feel confident because of your skin.” That insecurity has shaped her standards today. “I remember doing the school run when I was testing a different foundation and I felt so self-conscious that it was so heavy, I didn’t want to look the other mums in the eye–I felt like I had a mask on. I want my foundation to give me confidence, to perfect my complexion, but I don’t want to feel like I’m wearing a mask. That’s a very old-fashioned look.”
This insistence on breathability and real-skin finish explains why she landed on drops—featherlight, buildable, modern.
The Foundation Drops joins a complexion line that already includes the Concealer Pen and extends Beckham’s existing collaboration of a serum and primer with stem cell scientist Professor Augustinus Bader and his eponymous skin-care line, which has become a defining feature of Victoria Beckham Beauty. “I like to partner with the best. For me, that is Professor Bader–I can’t compete with him, nor do I want to–I want to collaborate, and always with the best.”
As with the rest of her complexion products, the Drops fuse makeup and treatment. At the heart is Bader’s proprietary TFC8 complex, transporting nutrients to skin cells to aid renewal, alongside echinacea extract to plump, spilanthes flower to smooth, and olive leaf extract to support barrier function. “I can do a self-care day but still wear my foundation,” Beckham says. “Because it is ultimately also treating the skin.”
As a beauty director, I’m wary of hyperbole – but having worn the foundation myself, I can attest that it does what she says. The texture is remarkable: thin and fluid, but capable of being built into polished coverage. It looks less like makeup than like well-rested skin, surviving the heatwaves and rainstorms of our London summer and beyond.
The Foundation Drops launches in 19 flexible shades, each designed with stretch to adapt across a wide spectrum of skin tones and undertones. Beckham likes to apply the foundation with her own brushes the launch of which, earlier this spring, was a subtle clue to devotees that a foundation was on the way–though she notes it can just as easily be pressed in with fingertips for a sheer finish.
For Beckham, this launch is about more than product innovation–it’s about rewriting her own history with skin. “I have struggled with my skin my whole life… and I know how it feels not to feel confident. That’s why this product is so personal to me–I want other women to finally feel seen and understood.”
She adds: “When I say it’s been a lifetime in the making, I mean it. I’ve worn makeup since I was far too young because I was so self-conscious about my acne–and I’ve been searching ever since for something that actually makes skin look and feel better. This is it.”
Shop more of Vogue’s favorite Victoria Beckham Beauty products, below.
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