Business reporters sat down to type about the Victoria Beckham fashion label for years because it was the kind of story they were used to hearing. A wealthy celebrity with a well-known last name starts a high-end brand. It spends money quickly. They roll their eyes. In the background, the losses are slowly adding up, but the front pages are all about the fashion shows. It seemed like it had to happen.
It didn’t seem like it was going to happen, and to be honest, it still does. The story didn’t end there.
With the launch of her namesake label in 2008, Beckham moved from pop music to fashion in a way that didn’t quite fit with how people saw her. The business always lost money for the first fourteen years. Some reports say that the total losses were more than £66 million. Reports said that they spent a lot of money on things that didn’t make sense now, like £70,000 a year on plants just for the office. Something like that will stick with you. Not because it’s bad, but because it shows the kind of unchecked costs that can sink businesses that don’t have enough money to cover them yet.
Beckham has said that the attention was worse because she is famous. It wasn’t a secret corporate filing buried in a trade magazine when the business was having trouble. It was on the front page of the newspaper. Something almost cruel about that situation is that the fame that helps sell a luxury brand also makes every mistake stand out more. The most accurate way to describe it is probably as a “double-edged sword.”
The change began about five years ago, but it wasn’t very loud about it. Beckham, who called herself a “reformed control freak,” started giving more tasks to other people. As she grew the business, she made it less reliant on expensive ready-to-wear, which is notoriously hard for even well-known houses. In 2019, she started a beauty line, and each year that goes by makes that choice look better. The beauty line, which included affordable items like £30 eyeliners, helped the brand reach more people and make more money.
By 2022, the business had made £200,000. Not a huge number, but one that meant something—a real turning point after losing for more than ten years. At the same time, sales were going up sharply. In 2020, it was £36 million. In 2022, it was £59 million. The next year, it was £89 million. The amount that is expected for this fiscal year is about $170 million. That’s not a small change. That makes a big difference in how big the business is.
Still, it’s not clear if the profitability is fully spread out across the whole operation. The holding company, which includes both the fashion label and the beauty business, still had a loss of £3 million in 2024, according to a filing. This was partly because it spent money on new product lines and inventory. The fashion label was making money on its own, but the group as a whole was still getting started. That difference is important. It costs money to grow, and it’s possible that the current spending is planned rather than careless. But investors and other interested parties will be paying close attention to the next set of numbers.
The brand’s positioning has changed for sure. A new collection with Gap will have items priced between $34 and $328. This is a big step for a label whose main line usually costs over $10,000. The fashion industry will argue for years about whether this broadening weakens the luxury brand or strengthens it in a smart way.
As I watch this all play out, I get the impression that Beckham has been more planned about this comeback than the initial stumbles might suggest. Reuters thinks that the company could be worth about $700 million if a stake is sold in the future. Even if that doesn’t happen, it shows how the market now sees something that was once seen as a luxury item for celebrities.
“This has never been a vanity project,” she said not long ago. That statement has been hard to believe for a long time. It does right now.
