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SHE ENDED 2023 dining at The Ritz with her family and started the new year with a lavish feast at her London home. ‘Wishing all your dreams come true in 2024,’ Victoria Beckham posted to her 32.6m Instagram followers on 1 January, looking the picture of happiness in an emerald green dress of her own design. She has every reason to be cheerful: at 49, her own dreams have come true, as the business she launched in 2008 moves into profitability.
For the former Spice Girl, who has worked doggedly to build her fashion brand in the face of harsh critics, there can be no better start to the year than the public disclosure that revenues at Victoria Beckham’s fashion and beauty brand rose 44% to £58.8m in 2022, with accounts showing that it was £200,000 in the black.
For a business that has struggled to make a profit in the 15 years since its inception, this is particularly positive news. No wonder Victoria gifted David a flock of chickens on Christmas Day: for her naysayers, it was a symbol that the chickens have come home to roost – and laid a few golden eggs while they were at it.
Her critics have always made much of her label’s lack of profitability but, in the context of the luxury fashion business, being in the red is often par for the course. Due to hefty operating costs, it can take years to launch a fashion brand from scratch and nurture it into profit, as Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and a slew of other start-ups would attest. But her pop star background, footballer husband and lack of formal design training have always led to Victoria being judged more harshly than her competitors. Rather than let this affect her, however, she has always come out fighting, more determined than ever to prove her detractors wrong.
It’s this tenacity that is the overarching reason behind her current success, alongside a clutch of shrewd and timely business decisions. In April 2022, she launched VB Body, a shapewear range that catered to the current bodycon trend. In September 2023, after eight years of research, she launched three new scents – not her first foray into fragrance, but her first where she fully owns the licence. She has also credited her CEO, Marie Leblanc (formerly of Celine and Isabel Marant), for restructuring her business and helping sales in her flagship London store increase by 80%.
While Victoria has always been the best advertisement for her own clothes, more recently, she has also become the best advertisement for her own beauty products. Beauty is now thought to be at the core of her enterprise’s success, accounting for more than half of sales, according to industry bible
