“This Is Girl Power Now”: Victoria Beckham Debuts Her First Fragrance Collection in New York
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On the heels of Beckham, the four-part biographical Netflix miniseries sweeping the nation, one might expect the presence of Victoria and David Beckham to elicit a sort of frenzy. But in the airy Stephen Weiss Studio in Manhattan’s West Village last night, the mood was serene, and the two could be found in a setting that felt as if you had stepped into their home, complete with low-lying black sectional sofas and rows of white roses. “I have this vision of if I lived in New York, what would it look like?” Victoria Beckham told Vogue. “It looks like this. The energy is wonderful, and I’m all about energy. I’m here with my husband right now, as well as my entire beauty team, who are based here. I go between London, Paris, New York, and Miami, and I love coming here because the creativity I have with my team here is exceptional.”
Joined by confidantes and supporters like Helena Christensen, Olivia Palermo Johannes Huebl, Jenna Lyons, and Vogue’s Virginia Smith and Mark Holgate, the cocktail fête was the final stop in the global launch of the designer’s trio of inaugural fragrances, eight years in the making, which made a subtle debut at her eponymous brand’s Paris runway show last month. The show’s venue, an 18th-century Parisian townhouse once belonging to Karl Lagerfeld, had been scented with room sprays and candles from the collection across three expressions, all three of which are tied to deeply personal memories.
There’s Suite 302, named after a suite in the Ritz Paris. “This is about our love affair with Paris, and when we were dating in the ’90s, the opulence of the ’90s, and when we renewed our wedding vows and stayed in Suite 302,” Beckham told us last night.
There’s Portofino 1997, an homage to the couple’s first getaway together to the Italian seaside town. “We stayed at Hotel Splendido in Portofino and had 48 hours together, which, at the time, we would struggle to find time together because he was always playing for Manchester United and I was always with the Spice Girls, so this is about a new romance, infatuation, passion,” she told Vogue. “I remember how Portofino smelled. I remember the crisp white sheets. I remember the color of the sky. I remember the color of the sea.”
And finally, there’s San Ysidro Drive, tied to the scent memory of the family’s move to Los Angeles from Europe. “That was our address in L.A. where, after the turbulence of Spain, going there gave a sense of wellness, crystal energy, meditation, learning to love and accept myself. This is about self-love, self-care, a new chapter for us as a family, and for me truly loving me,” she added.
All three scents are celebrated in what is a noticeable about-face from traditional wind-blowing, bottle-clutching fragrance advertising devised by Beckham and Steven Klein, the lead image of which is a simple portrait that greeted guests upon arrival. “I knew it had to be [Klein], because I love how the woman is sexy, but she owns the narrative and she’s strong,” Beckham said of Klein’s photography. "When you look at that picture downstairs, with the arms crossed, that was taken actually during the test the day before the shoot. I hadn t had hair and makeup. I was just standing there, and he took that picture and I looked at it, and I don’t talk a lot about my past in the Spice Girls, but at that moment, I thought, ’This is girl power now, as we know it today. This is a strong woman talking to women, and I love that image.”
The portrait is accompanied by three cinematic black-and-white images, which decorated the room alongside their accompanying scents. “There’s nothing wrong with a celebrity fragrance, but that’s not where I’m at right now,” she explained. “We’ve worked hard at getting credibility as a fashion brand, as a beauty brand, and already as a fragrance brand, so these images had to be editorial by nature, and I wanted people to look at them and say, ‘Is that her?’”
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