If Gerri Halliwell’s DIY Union Jack minidress at the 1997 Brits became Cool Britannia’s unofficial insignia, there was another look onstage that night that would leave its mark on Blighty’s pop culture. Posh Spice – still a few months away from meeting a certain Manchester United midfielder and becoming the WAG ne plus ultra – accepted the Spice Girls’ statuettes for British Single and Video of the Year in a corseted grey chiffon dress custom made for her by ’90s Fashion Week fixture Maria Grachvogel. Its sultry minimalism was, Ms Adams decided, the epitome of the “Posh” aesthetic.
Cut to 2000, and the newly minted Mrs Beckham agreed to make her modelling debut on Maria’s autumn/winter catwalk. In retrospect, AW00 was a landmark one for London Fashion Week – and not just because it marked the first season of the 21st century. Think of Julien Macdonald’s presentation at the Millennium Dome, where Naomi Campbell modelled and Jay-Z performed for a 3,000-strong audience; Alexander McQueen’s invocation of the Yoruba spirit Eshu; and Hussein Chalayan’s After Words show at Sadler’s Wells, where clothing became furniture and vice versa. “I remember the night before, we were fitting like crazy in my studio, and the Bulgarian throat singers I invited to perform in the show were practising upstairs,” Chalayan recalled in British Vogue almost a decade later. “There were only four singers, but their voices must have spread throughout the whole of Covent Garden. It was magical.” Nothing and no one, however, generated the same level of media hysteria as Victoria; the notion of a celebrity on the runway was, after all, still distinctly novel in 2000.
Getty Images
Getty Images
Grachvogel chose to present her collection in the British Fashion Council tent at the Natural History Museum, then the epicentre of LFW. The 46 looks were inspired, she told assembled reporters, by “free spirits”, with models striding towards an assembled bank of DSLRs wearing beaded maxi skirts and dresses in forest greens and deep maroons, their mermaid tresses twisted into delicate coils. Not so Posh, who appeared to audible gasps in a peridot cashmere poloneck and matching satin hotpants, her cropped hair in blonde highlighted spikes. And for the show’s finale? She did a victory lap in a ruffled flamenco dress before posing with Grachvogel as the two clutched bouquets of lilies.
