Still as posh as ever. Victoria Beckham sat down for an extended chat with fashion legend Fern Mallis at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y on Wednesday, June 3, and spoke about everything from her first impressions of the Spice Girls to what made her fall in love with David Beckham.
“I’ve achieved a lot in 41 years and I like how 41 feels,” Beckham told Mallis, looking back on her early start as a pop princess and progression into a fashion heavyweight. “I feel good. I don’t like how it sounds too much. It doesn’t sound great but you know I’m proud of everything I’ve achieved. I’ve got four incredible children, a wonderful life with my husband. I couldn’t have done much more in 41 years so I’m okay with it.”
Beckham’s revelation comes more than 20 years after she got her start with the Spice Girls. She joined Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm, and Geri Halliwell in 1994, nabbing her spot in the hugely successful pop group.
“I went to audition — there were thousands of girls that showed up for the audition and there were queues around the dance studio in London,” Beckham explained. “Everybody stood up one by one and were being taped and everybody sang songs… I think I sang Mein Herr from Cabaret, which was really, really not the right thing to do but it got me in the group.”
Beckham was then dubbed Posh Spice, selling out arenas with Scary Spice, Baby Spice, Sporty Spice, and Ginger Spice.
“Nobody put those images on us,” she said of the girls’ famous monikers. “We all just looked that way. I always dressed that way. Mel B was always the scary one wearing the leopard print and Emma was always the baby one wearing the pigtails and there’s those bloody awful shoes they made us —those big platform shoes.”
Beckham has since traded in her platforms for stilettos, as she made the shift from music to fashion in the late 2000s.
“I don’t like the idea of being in a pop group,” she said. “I mean, it never came naturally to me. You really have to work hard.”
While the pop career may not have been a natural choice for Beckham, her friendships with her four bandmates were. “I hadn’t met any of the girls until we were all put in the group… I’m still very close with the girls,” she said. “They’re all really, really great girls.”
“I think people liked the fact that we were real,” she added. “We weren’t choreographed… normal girls could relate to us. And our method was it doesn’t matter if you’re a little bit different. That’s where girl power came from. Just be who you are, be proud of who you are. I really value friendships between other girls.”
Another relationship that Beckham touched on is her 15-year marriage to husband David Beckham. She told Mallis that she was introduced to the soccer player, 40, by mutual friend Simon Fuller.
“[Fuller] invited me actually to the football match with him and he introduced me and David after the game,” she said of a Manchester United game in the 1990s. “You know what I really liked about David after that? When all the other players [were] in the lounge afterwards having a drink with their friends, David is sitting with his mum and dad and his younger sister and I really liked that.”
“I’m really close with my family, he’s really close with his,” the mother of four continued. “I just felt like that was really nice… I believe in love at first sight. I really do. It was great, really great. He’s this incredible husband and wonderful father. I mean he is so good with the children. He really is.”
