Victoria Beckham covers the latest issue of WSJ. Magazine, mostly to promote her fashion and makeup brand. She’s doing a collab with The Gap as well. Since more than half of this piece is about her business, it’s actually really funny to see how many of her quotes were devoted to denying that her business has lost millions of dollars for years and years through mismanagement and products which don’t sell. She’s hanging her hat on her (legitimately) successful makeup line, but she swears that the fashion line is doing well too. Recollections may vary, especially since she *just* lost another partner amid “mounting losses” for the label. Besides all of this business-talk, Victoria addresses some personal stuff too, like her estrangement from her eldest son Brooklyn. Some highlights:
She dreams big: For years, the Victoria Beckham brand was in the red, with Victoria and her staff spending wildly on fabrics and scrapping designs at the 11th hour in pursuit of perfection. But she is proud to say that the company’s latest phase has been one of radical transformation: It rose to record profits in the past year, with a Netflix documentary taking viewers behind the scenes of the turnaround that boosted sales. Now she’s laying plans for something bigger: a legacy brand selling everything from fragrances to handbags, one that she hopes will long outlive her. “I’m very optimistic,” Beckham, 51, says. “I dream big.”
Motherhood: “Being a parent of young adult children and adult children, gosh, I mean, it’s very different from having little children. I think that we’re trying to do the best we can.”
Meeting David Beckham at the age of 24: “At 24, you’re almost a child yourself.”
Brand Victoria Beckham: A than five years ago, Beckham’s brand was roughly $68 million in debt. Spending was out of control, says David Belhassen, founder of NEO Investment Partners, which entered as a stakeholder in 2017. “Of course Victoria would come with dreams of having big shows and spending there and doing the best fabric, and ‘Let’s redo the whole dress, it’s not working, it’s not what I want,’ ” he says. After hearing her ideas, her staff didn’t dare tell her no, he says. In Victoria Beckham, the documentary series, Belhassen describes the company spending roughly $90,000 a year on plants. In 2017, David Beckham funneled roughly $30 million into Victoria’s company through his own firm, DB Ventures. But it’s their money, Victoria says. “We share everything, and so we were both supporting the business really at a time where financially we weren’t really in a position to do that,” she says.
Her successful makeup line: The makeup provided a big cash boost. After 14 years of losses, the daily operations of the company finally climbed into the black in 2022. The returns have grown since then, and the company reported roughly $2.8 million in earnings for the 2024 fiscal year, before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That’s four years of double-digit revenue growth. Projected revenue for 2025 is roughly $170 million. Beckham says her makeup child didn’t need to bail out her fashion child. “At a time when we’re reading so much about how fashion is really struggling, the huge houses are really struggling, to be an independent brand, be profitable, fashion in its own right—clothing is selling and we are profitable independent of beauty—is something that I’m so proud of.”
On Brooklyn’s Instagram Stories statement: “I think that we’ve always—we love our children so much. We’ve always tried to be the best parents that we can be. And you know, we’ve been in the public eye for more than 30 years right now, and all we’ve ever tried to do is protect our children and love our children. And you know, that’s all I really want to say about it.”
Her other children: “Cruz is on tour at the moment, bless him,” Victoria says of her 21-year-old indie-rocker son. “He has done this at very much a grassroots approach.” She spoke lovingly of her lower-profile family members, including 14-year-old Harper. “She’s very sweet, she’s very kind, she works hard, and she’s also very appropriate, which I think is really important as well.”
Therapy: In 26 years of marriage, she says, she and David have never been to couples therapy (though she’s been to a therapist herself). She praises laughter and communication. She’s spoken about suffering from an eating disorder that she overcame by focusing on health and fitness with help from David.
Her statement about Brooklyn was purposefully vague and demonstrably false. David and Victoria absolutely used their kids to build Brand Beckham, so there was a mix of protection alongside exploitation. But in recent years, no, Victoria hasn’t protected Brooklyn or his wife. Victoria and David have gone out of their way to target Brooklyn in a really gross way. As for the business side of the conversation… Victoria’s comment about David funneling money to prop up her failing business is so funny. “But it’s their money, Victoria says” – sure. Did she have to remind David of that? That she would take half if they ever divorced?
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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
