Fake it until you make it. This mantra, popularized by the culture of personal development on social media, was already being applied by Victoria Beckham in the early 2000s. This Wednesday, in an interview with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the designer was as comfortable as she was amused. On the pink armchair, the former Spice Girl sets herself free: each anecdote is more sincere, more piquant, more unexpected than the last.
Commenting on archival photos selected by the host, the Englishwoman paused on a photo of herself with husband David Beckham in the streets of London. In it, she wears an immaculate outfit and a Louis Vuitton bag that matches perfectly… or almost perfectly.
“It wasn’t a real Louis Vuitton bag,” she confessed. “We were shopping on Bond Street, and it was a fake.”
“Marc Jacobs, the house’s artistic director at the time, contacted me after seeing the photo. He said, ‘I’ll send you a real one.’” Mischievously, she concluded with a pun on her long-ago nickname: “Not as posh as you think, Alex. Not all the time.”
Who could have imagined that Victoria’s bag was a counterfeit? At the time, no one would have dared. She was a Spice Girl, the wife of the world’s most famous footballer—the epitome of luxury and status. The story, then, reminds us that how people perceive us is often a question of looks, confidence, and what you project.
In the end, the anecdote speaks volumes about Victoria’s trajectory. By wearing the fake, she ended up invoking the real—and it worked. Since then, Victoria Beckham has built an empire at the helm of one of Britain’s most respected fashion houses. It seems almost unreal to think that the accomplished businesswoman she has become once felt the need for a fake bag to exist in conversation. And if we had to sum up her career, another mantra might be: Trust the process.
Originally published in Vanity Fair France.
