Victoria Beckham’s fashion business has just posted a frankly alarming set of accounts for last year. Independent auditors refer to ‘material uncertainties which may cast significant doubt over the group and company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’
The accounts for Victoria Beckham Limited show that its losses have widened to £4.8million ($6.4m) and the company has had to be propped up by yet another loan from David and Victoria of a huge £6.2million ($8.3m).
The accounts explicitly raise the possibility that the company could go under – something Mrs Beckham’s people say is ‘purely technical’ and ‘nothing to focus on’.
But they also refer quite extensively to the forthcoming Netflix documentary about the former Spice Girl and her fashion business.
It sounds as if there are high hopes that the four-part show, streaming globally from the start of October, will make a big enough splash to turn things around.
And so the mystery, of course, is who appears in her show – now simply titled Victoria Beckham – and what on earth do they say?
My first bombshell is that former UK Vogue editor Edward Enninful, once her great supporter, is not taking part.
Victoria Beckham and her husband at the National Portrait Gallery in 2019
I’m told she is ‘warm’ about Victoria and her efforts to make it in the cut-throat business of fashion – a great concession from an editor dubbed ‘Nuclear Wintour’ for her frostiness.
But no Enninful. He, let’s remember, put Posh and her children on the cover in 2018 and hosted her at a lavish party in that year.
None of her former bandmates from the Spice Girls are in it, either.
And I can reveal that just one of her children has made the edit for the show. Which one?
Drumroll… and step forward, Harper. She appears briefly at the end of the documentary, which I understand also stays away from Victoria’s marriage to former footballer David and the thorny family drama.
Vogue legend Anna Wintour has agreed to feature in the documentary (Pictured: Victoria Beckham with the editor-in-chief in 2012)
The choice to feature Harper alone reflects the fact that Victoria seems to be grooming the 14-year-old for a fashion role. It’s surely no coincidence that the youngster recently remarked she would like to have a ‘brand’ of her own in due course.
Although she is still at school, she posts ‘get ready with me’ videos featuring her mother’s makeup brand already.
There’s no sign of the boys – Brooklyn, Romeo (despite him being a fashion model) or Cruz (an aspiring musician). Brooklyn is, of course, embroiled in a painful feud with his parents, who seem to deeply dislike his wife Nicola.
The only other contributor who I am certain is in the mix is the designer Roland Mouret. He was a mentor to Victoria when she was starting out. The two were brought together by Simon Fuller, who at the time managed both of them.
Mouret denies the widely circulated reports that he helped her to design her first collection. (Unusually for a fashion designer, Mrs Beckham does not draw or cut her designs, but tells other people what she wants.)
The four-part documentary has been made by David Beckham’s production company, and one of the producers of the film also sits on the board of the fashion firm. You might think that is a cosy arrangement!
But get ready for another bitter feud in Posh’s life, as her former manager Simon Fuller is – quite extraordinarily – not in the show, nor is he mentioned.
That’s despite the fact that by any reckoning, he is the architect of Brand Beckham – the genius idea which made the Beckhams so rich – and the facilitator of her fashion business.
She sent him to the deep freeze on a personal level some years ago.
He remains on the board of her fashion business, however. He was an investor at the start, and it seems she hasn’t been able to afford to buy him out. Although David did manage to buy Fuller out of his company back in 2019.
There might be a lesson in all this for Brooklyn. The lady’s not for turning… once you have been scrubbed from her personal narrative, there is no way back.
Fuller is currently trying to get a Spice Girls tour up and running in some form (Geri will only do it as an avatar, the Mels and Emma want to be in person.)
Victoria is not even involved in any of the conversations and everyone in Spice World privately acknowledges that hell will freeze over before she joins a tour – especially one organised by Fuller.
A source says: ‘There is a lot of resentment still between the Beckhams and Simon Fuller.’
As for Enninful, sources say that they are still tight, even though he wasn’t asked to appear. He was at her 50th birthday party earlier in the year.
The word is that the documentary gives a behind-the-scenes look at preparations for her fashion show in Paris last autumn, and that the ‘talking heads’ give an account of her early days in the fashion business. Enninful wasn’t in charge at Vogue back then, hence apparently his not being invited.
(I hear, incidentally, that Enninful is no longer tight with another of his highest profile Vogue cover girls, Meghan Markle – but that’s a subject for another day.)
Of course, one high-profile guest at that September fashion show was Nicola Peltz-Beckham – pictured looking loved-up on the red carpet with her husband Brooklyn before the latest round of feuding kicked off.
And needless to say, she won’t be getting a cameo…
