From Spice to Substance: The Making of Mrs B
Two decades on, Victoria Beckham’s story is no longer about reinvention, but endurance, and the quiet power of credibility hard-earned.
The past week, most of us have been indulging in Netflix’s Victoria Beckham series, well, most of us Mrs B aficionados, that is. And what a guilty pleasure it was.
While there have been documentaries before, this is the second to focus on her career as a designer. Back in 2013, The Skype Collaboration Project was launched as a platform to inspire and enable young creatives to have exclusive access to experts in the industry through its online platform.
One of these projects was Five Years - The Victoria Beckham Fashion Story; it promised a rare view into her creative process: video calls, fittings, fabric swatches, and all. It was meant to show the woman behind the myth. And for some, there was a chance to ask questions via video messages with Mrs B herself! (Skype up your life! sorry). I remember all too well watching it. A small Skype blue logo flickered on-screen and connected the world to Victoria Beckham’s studio, a designer in motion, a team at work, a brand finding its language.
At the time, the idea felt radical. Fashion films weren’t yet streaming phenomena. Sure, we’d had Signé Chanel (2005), Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (2007), and Le Jour d’Avant (a backstage of the catwalk shows released in 2009), all by journalist, documentary filmmaker and YouTuber Loïc Prigent, who offered us glimpses into these exclusive creative worlds, but “access” still meant glossy editorials, not webcams. Vogue UK described it as a “ground-breaking storytelling format,” one that invited audiences to see her as more than the poised figure on the front row.
But it was also a risk: an early experiment in digital transparency. That, and the fact that the world wasn’t ready to believe that a former pop star could also be a serious designer. The documentary’s tone was almost cautious; she was proving herself, showing the work, trying to build trust in real time. For every viewer intrigued by her precision and discipline, another dismissed it as branding dressed up as intimacy.
On a side note, it was also a strategic way for Skype to attract a younger generation, and essentially lure them away from Google Hangouts; we know how that ended.
Fast forward to more than a decade later, and Netflix’s Victoria Beckham arrives in a very different world. One that no longer questions her legitimacy. The tone has shifted from Can she design? to How did she get here?
The new series is polished, cinematic, structured, and self-aware. It is populated by a more refined circle of voices: Jürgen Teller, Tom Ford, Anna Wintour, and Donatella Versace. A cast that reinforces how far Victoria Beckham has come since those early Skype days. There’s a brilliant irony, too, when she recalls years ago, during her Posh Spice era, how she once “redesigned” a Versace dress, an act that left Donatella less than impressed.
Mentors like Roland Mouret grounded her early ambitions in rigour. “From the top, where she is, I had to bring her back to the bottom to learn,” he recalls in the series, a reminder that humility is often the foundation of craft. It also nods lightly to the elephant in the room: the long-held suspicion that Mouret was the real hand behind her early collections, a reflection less of fact than of how reluctant the industry was to believe her skill could match her fame. Yet those doubts only seem to underline how deliberately she earned her credibility, one collection at a time.
It’s through these relationships and lessons that the series gains its depth, weaving past and present as it builds towards her Paris Fashion Week show, with a pacing that recalls Loïc Prigent’s Le Jour d’Avant: the fittings, the late decisions, the weather threatening to ruin everything. It captures the tension that never quite makes it to the headlines.
This series is a portrait of someone whose credibility within the industry has been hard-won. It’s a full-circle moment that says everything about how far Mrs B has travelled, from playful imitation to genuine recognition. The storytelling is refined, deliberate, and strategic. But it’s also surprisingly human. She talks about scrutiny, body image, and the endless need to prove herself.
What it shows is not reinvention, but perseverance. And the woman behind it all is still very much Mrs B. There’s a tenderness that runs throughout, especially in the moments with David: the teasing, the laughter, the quiet partnership that grounds all the discipline. It’s a reminder that behind the brand, there’s a genuine connection built on love and respect, proof that authenticity doesn’t have to shout to be felt.
It’s the honesty about the struggle that makes the Netflix series striking. It shows how fashion isn’t easy, not even for the famous. She speaks openly about her company’s financial challenges, about what it takes to keep a brand alive. There’s vulnerability in her transparency, a quiet admission that success isn’t selective. Even for celebrities, creative work demands resilience. Even Victoria Beckham, with her fame and fortune, needed twenty years to be taken seriously and eventually profitable.
For some, the series is too polished, too curated. But perhaps that polish is the story, after all, it is Posh Spice we’re talking about.
The contrast between Skype’s raw immediacy and Netflix’s cinematic calm mirrors not just Victoria Beckham’s evolution, but fashion’s too. The first was a plea for credibility. The second, a meditation on endurance.
In the end, the series is about a woman who outlasted opinion by trusting her own rhythm. In a culture obsessed with immediacy, that’s the quietest, and perhaps most powerful, victory.
For emerging designers, her journey is a reminder that credibility is built quietly, not overnight; that the work of being taken seriously is often invisible. Victoria Beckham’s path from Skype calls to Netflix screens isn’t a rebrand; it’s proof that perseverance can outlast perception.
Because sometimes, the most radical thing a designer can do is stay long enough for the story to change.