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Victoria Beckham at New York Fashion Week: Dresses With Capes

by Tina Kells | February 16, 2009 at 12:13 pm

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Victoria Beckham debuted her second high-end dress collection at a show in the Waldorf Towers during New York Fashion Week. The 23 dress collection is a highly structured, impeccably tailored display made of carefully selected fabrics chosen by Mrs. David Beckham herself.

The fall/winter 2009 collection is made up of figure flattering knee length or longer dresses that Beckham describes as "sexy, from a woman's perspective." Great attention is given to the smaller details, like zipper placement (some run the entire length of a dress) and color (most are in gold) and seam structure (which is as decorative as it is functional).

The color selections were rich but muted, a throw back to a more sleek and elegant time in fashion. The collection, which has been described as 1950's era costume-like, also includes a series of capes. The capes, made of a rubberized tweed that Beckham is quick to point out "is NOT waterproof," are a signature piece in this collection.

Can Victoria Beckham do for capes what she did for high end jeans? The world must now just wait and see.

This is only the second collection she has put her name to – and is she learning.

She wore one of the dresses herself, in pewter silk gazar, epaulette-sleeved and uncorsetted – unlike the dresses she showed for spring/summer which each had a built-in, “obi” corset.

“This time, we have made the corset as a separate item. I’ve talked to my customers and found they would rather have the option of wearing the dresses without.”

Hence the addition of a fine, cotton and power-mesh corset, lightly-boned, which sits under the bust, does not “push your boobs up too high – that’s vulgar” and clings to the body, rather than gripping it.

The lengths are shorter, too, much like the one Victoria wears herself, just on the knee. It is a length which finds more favour, she says – and which anyway she prefers to wear herself- than the slightly retro, mid-calf hemlines of last season.

Still, the dresses suggest a scenario where Joan Crawford has just walked onto the set of Mad Men, the vintage advertising TV series renowned as much for its costume accuracy as its slang and jargon and sexism of the era.