Victoria Beckham in Manhattan this week
Today I want to write something nice about Victoria Beckham, I really do. I don’t want yet another really cross e-mail from her public relations manager sitting ominously in my inbox.
And I am loath to type a single negative adjective about an Armani design, having only recently been deemed sufficiently rehabilitated by the Italian designer’s quite scary press team and allowed back into the Milan catwalk shows (unlike The New York Times’s Cathy Horyn, who has just started her sentence out in the cold because, according to Giorgio Armani himself, she wrote something demeaning about his niece, Roberta).
But, honestly, what on earth was the Twiglet-limbed one thinking when, this week, at the annual Costume Institute Ball in Manhattan, the “Oscars of the East”, she turned up as lamb dressed as mutton in a vintage sheer, beaded cream lace dressing gown from the Armani autumn/winter 1989 collection?
Rather than look her age, which is 34, she looked at least 50.
Her hair was in a harsh updo, her lips painted pillarbox red, her cheekbones were heavy handedly shaded and highlighted, her eyes were rimmed with white kohl, a make-up trick which is supposed to make your eyes look larger, but hasn’t been seen on anyone since Marlene Dietrich was still alive.
Then there was her pallor which was like that of a ghost, or a corpse.
In fact, the image of Bette Davis in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? has just sprung, unbidden, into my brain.
The evening, which had a superheroes theme, was co-hosted by Giorgio Armani and Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, who I assume had air-kissed and made up, given their recent falling out.
Earlier this year, at the Press conference to announce the event, Ms Wintour had pronounced the age of Armani “over” (and, oh my god, if it wasn’t before Victoria stepped out in that dress, it certainly is now).
Meanwhile, the designer had said of the most powerful woman in fashion (Anna Wintour, not VB) that he “can’t understand why so many people don’t like her. I am indifferent to her; what she thinks is a beautiful dress, maybe I don’t think it is a beautiful dress”. Oh dear.
But Ms Wintour has a point. Armani is elegant and simple, but it is not cutting edge, or cool, or edgy, or sexy - qualities Victoria always looks for in an outfit. And so while the Armani outfit was a surprise choice for Victoria, there is a very good reason she was wearing that label.
Because Victoria, husband David and the second most annoying celebrity couple in the world, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise (who, by the way, was wearing tuxedo trousers that were far too short for him; a man’s trousers should crumple just once on the shoe, not dingle-dangle in mid-air), were attending as “guests” of Giorgio Armani (he likes to call them “friends”), then of course that is what they had to wear.
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Fashion victim: Lady in red in 2006 (left), Posh on the catwalk in 2007
When you see a celebrity at a designer event, inevitably dressed head-to-toe by the host in question, you can bet your last euro that the star has been flown to the venue first class, put up in a swanky hotel, and gets to keep the clothes (Armani’s press team have yet to confirm or deny my supposition).
Surely, though, with hindsight, the Beckhams should have travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art under their own steam, because Victoria’s outfit did not suit her at all. 
Her unique selling point is that she possesses a nice brand of self-deprecating humour, which would have been better served by a quirky, witty and much younger outfit by an up-and-coming British designer - the short, flirty silver disc dress by Christopher Kane, say, would have been perfect. Celebrating with husband David this New Year
Victoria simply doesn’t suit the dour, buttoned-up, super-sophisticated gown that needs, ooh, I don’t know, the knowing likes of Lauren Hutton circa American Gigolo (the movie that made Armani’s name) to pull it off.
Trying to look soignée and elegant and failing miserably is, unfortunately, Victoria’s most common fashion faux pas.
She stepped out on New Year’s Eve in a vintage gown, turban and over-made-up face that merely served to make her look miserable; she resembled Ena Sharples while undergoing colonic irrigation.
At a catwalk show not long ago, I saw Victoria in a very severe black skirt suit by Dolce & Gabbana, teamed with her trademark superpointy black shoes (at least the strappy silver sandals she wore in Manhattan were light and pretty).
Somehow on Victoria the outfit was not, as it was meant to be, ironic and sexy, but instead depressing and faintly ridiculous.
You see, the problem is that at the very bourgeois, top end of the designer market, the only end Victoria wants to buy into, whether the designer be Chanel, Dior or Armani, the only women who can afford to purchase the couture collections (rather than just the shoes, or the bags, or the perfume) are, and I hate to say this, pretty damn old.
Twenty or thirtysomethings aren’t really meant to fetch up in floor-length tulle festooned with rose buds and Swarovski crystal, which is why, at red carpet events, everyone, even the likes of Keira Knightley, inevitably looks far beyond their years. And while a young woman can pull off a big occasion frock, it is only when she keeps her face fresh, her hair tousled and her expression sunny.
On Victoria, who always wears lots of make-up because of her deep-seated insecurities about her skin and her looks (did you see her on the cover of British Vogue? Not only was her hand in front of her face, she was airbrushed into oblivion), who rarely cracks a smile in public, and who hasn’t the confidence to wear a dress, rather than let it wear her, the result is disastrous. To put it bluntly, Posh just cannot do Posh.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk Liz Jones
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