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NEW YORK, United State s— "A quiet celebration" Victoria Beckham called the show that launched her 10th anniversary year. The presentation at an uptown mansion was intimate. She wanted it that way so everyone could see the details. But the initial impression wasn't so much detail, but more the broad-strikes rigour of emphatically-shouldered, tightly belted pieces cut from boiled felt. Figure in the felt sacks thrown over the models' shoulders, and a couple of capes, and there was something military about the effect.
That’s a measure of how far Beckham has come in her decade in business. In a nutshell, killer heels to flattest flats. It’s her own quiet feminist manifesto. (With the upcoming Spice Girls get-together, she’ll surely be leaving the sounding off about girl-power-grown-up to the quintet’s mouthier members.) But utilitarian sobriety is a tougher sell than the dresses that made Beckham’s rep, and she acknowledged the need for a little compromise by showing sinuous knit dresses with sunray pleating, and a leopard coat in a chenille jacquard she found in an upholstery shop in Venice. The plushness was welcome.
