The 5 biggest revelations in the new Netflix docuseries about the pop star turned fashion designer
Victoria Beckham is ready to get candid. All three parts of Netflix’s new docuseries, Victoria Beckham, were released at midnight on Thursday, giving fans the opportunity to see a more vulnerable side of the former pop star.
Directed by the Emmy-nominated filmmaker Nadia Hallgren, the docuseries chronicles the lead-up to Beckham’s 2024 Paris Fashion Week show, during which she debuted her spring/summer 2025 collection. Beckham first launched her fashion house, Victoria Beckham, in 2008. Her beauty brand, Victoria Beckham Beauty, was launched in 2019.
In addition to charting Beckham’s transition from mega pop star to designer of her own luxury brand, the documentary draws back the curtain on the darker side of fame. She describes feeling degraded and vilified by tabloids in the early aughts, but the criticism and hardship, she tells Netflix, have made her stronger. The former Posh Spice of the Spice Girls and the English soccer star David Beckham, whom she married in 1999, have four children, Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper.
“I would tell myself that one day all these different stages in your life, as difficult as they are, you will overcome them, and they’re going to become such useful tools for what comes later on in life,” Beckham said in a press release for the documentary. “It is the struggles that I’ve overcome that I now use in my work, and I’ve learned so much from those things.”
Beckham spent the Spice Girls’ clothing budget on Gucci
Beckham, originally Victoria Adams, was a member of the record-breaking English girl group the Spice Girls, which featured Mel B, Melanie C, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell and was active from 1994 to 2000. It was at this point that Beckham’s interest in luxury fashion took off.
Melanie C, Mel B., Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham of the Spice Girls. (Netflix)
“The Spice Girls took the blinkers off,” Beckham says in the documentary. “Pretty early on, we were working with great stylists, amazing makeup artists, and I learned so much. The other girls weren’t really into fashion. That left a really nice budget for me.”
Knowing she had a good chunk of the Spice Girls’ budget for clothing at her disposal, Beckham visited a Gucci store. It was at this point that fashion, for Beckham, “became everything.”
“I’d never, ever, owned a designer garment before, and so this was so new, so exciting. If you do put on the perfect dress, and it does make you feel a certain way. … You know, that confidence. That feeling was something I wasn’t used to,” she recalls.
Beckham once disrespected Donatella Versace
It’s not every day that you’re invited to choose whatever you want from a Versace store. After meeting Donatella Versace in 1997, Beckham was personally asked by the Italian fashion designer to attend a Versace show. She was then flown to Milan on a private plane and taken to the Versace store, where she was told to select whatever she wanted. She was immediately drawn to a little black dress, which became a staple garment for her as Posh Spice.
“I selected a black leather dress, and I remember trying on the dress, looking in the mirror, and saying to someone that worked in the store, ‘You know, I really like the dress, but how about, you know, let’s tighten it here, shorten it here,” she recalls. “Let’s take off the sleeves… Basically, [I] redesigned the whole dress.”
Beckham, looking back, was shocked by her own behavior.
“I really can’t believe I did that. So rude,” she says.
Versace was also taken aback by Beckham’s bold suggestions for redesigning the garment, although she ultimately conceded that the modifications were appropriate for the star’s body.
“You shouldn’t do it. That’s how I feel,” Versace says in the documentary. “I thought, ‘How does she dare? Then, I realized it was better on her the way she did it. She knows her body.”
Beckham felt like a ‘laughingstock’ after appearing in a Marc Jacobs campaign
In the documentary, Beckham talks about her deep respect for the American fashion designer Marc Jacobs. When Jacobs asked if she wanted to be part of his spring/summer 2008 campaign, Beckham enthusiastically agreed. But the resulting images, photographed by Juergen Teller, left her feeling embarrassed beyond belief.
Recognizing that Beckham, at the time, was “probably the most photographed woman in the world,” Teller wanted to poke fun in the shoot at her reputation as someone who was “kind of grumpy and serious and didn’t have a sense of humor.” Beckham, who at this point wanted to design clothing, felt the campaign emphasized how little the fashion industry thought of her.
“When I first saw those pictures, I was horrified,” Beckham says. “It was very much poking fun at me. And that’s when I realized I was a laughingstock. No one took me seriously in this industry [fashion]. I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer. I knew I had a point of view, but I also knew that I needed someone to believe in me.”
Ultimately, Beckham rewrote the narrative: On the tenth anniversary of setting up her brand, the mom of four tapped Teller to recreate the photo shoot — only this time, on Beckham’s own terms.
“When he [Teller] shot me ten years before, the laugh was on me. But I wanted to reclaim that image for myself. I wanted to say something with that photo,” Beckham says.
Beckham ‘totally proved’ Anna Wintour wrong
Anna Wintour, until recently Vogue’s editor in chief, didn’t always believe in Beckham’s potential as a fashion designer.
“I viewed her as a Spice Girl, and we admire her style and her sense of commitment to fashion, but most of the celebrities who got involved in our world are not true designers,” Wintour admits in the documentary. “I thought maybe this was a hobby. I didn’t quite believe it.”
Victoria Beckham and Anna Wintour in 2012. (Donato Sardella/WireImage via Getty Images)
But her tune changed after attending one of Beckham’s shows. Beckham had frequently invited the high-profile editor to her fashion shows, but Wintour had always declined. Eventually, though, her interest was piqued — and she decided to attend.
“I was skeptical,” Wintour says. “I think we can all be a little bit snobby in the fashion business, and think maybe this is a side gig, but Victoria was one that totally proved us wrong.”
Wintour goes on to praise Beckham’s creative sensibilities, adding, “It was clear that there was a vision there. There was a point of view for people to recognize what she stands for, and she’s achieved it with grace and with charm and with humility.”
Beckham opens up about her past eating disorder and being weighed on national TV
Beckham was a favorite target of tabloids and often felt as if she had no control over her image. As a result of the constant scrutiny of her body and of how she looked in photographs, Beckham hyperfixated on her weight.
“I could control my weight,” Beckham says. “And I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way. When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents. I never talked about it publicly. It really affects you when you’re being told constantly, ‘You’re not good enough.’ And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.”
Beckham also recalled the time she was weighed during a live television segment.
“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn was 6 months old,” she said, recalling her 1999 appearance on the British television show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. The host, Chris Evans, asked her to step on a scale live, to see what she weighed after the recent pregnancy.
“We laugh about it, and we joke about it when we’re on television, but I was really, really young, and that hurts,” Beckham says, remembering the headlines criticizing her weight, and calling her everything from “Porky Posh” to “Skinny Posh.”
Beckham adds, “I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know. You lose all sense of reality. … I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw.”
