Victoria Beckham has designed a new limited edition collection for Gap – 38 pieces to be exact, with a “perfect” white T-shirt, and the classic Gap logo hoodies, all reimagined with the addition of a Victoria Beckham logo.
Queues will be around the block as the on-trend 1990s-inspired items arrive in stores and online this Friday at a fraction of the price of her mainline collection, with items including the Capri jeans priced at £70, and a denim jacket, costing £95 – and in sizes from XS to XXL. Sharing a logo with Gap is reportedly a “pinch me moment” for Beckham. Lucratively, that may well be the case, as it gets her designs, loved by A-listers, out there to a far bigger audience.
But her main selling weapon? It’s Harper – yes! Her 14-year-old daughter, who, like any other child her age, is at school peobbly trying to get her head around GCSEs, is now being dragged into the bottomless pit of her parents’ PR machine, after the fashion designer told the Sunday Times: “Harper is going to love my Gap collection.”
“She loves nothing more than shopping on the high street. She’s going to love the Gap collection when she gets her hands on it,” Beckham gushed in the interview. Sure Victoria, nothing like name-dropping your daughter to drum up business among the younger audience.
Beckham’s Gap collection is her latest performative parenting push – one of many – in the endless merry-go-round of her plugging the Beckham brand by involving her four children. It’s been speculated that Harper may even be part of the Gap campaign itself, following in the footsteps of Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred with her daughter Apple Martin in a campaign for GapStudio last autumn.
Beckham just can’t stop the brand machine firing even though Brooklyn, 27, has told us loud and clear in his lengthy six-page Instagram statement in January that such attention isn’t always welcome and a huge part of his reason for his family estrangement.
Brooklyn has no plans to reconcile with his famous parents, who he accuses of “controlling him for most of his life” – and listening to his mum banging on about his poor sister’s love of Gap, is just another example of what he said he hated the most.
“For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family. The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into,” he wrote.
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. “Brand Beckham” comes first. Family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo opp, even if it’s at the expense of our professional obligations.”
The family business model has been spinning for him ever since his parents sold his baby photos to OK! magazine. When his mother broke her silence on family estrangement for the first time, she told the Wall Street Journal: “All we’ve ever tried to do is protect and love our children”.
“We’ve always tried to be the best parents that we can be,” she said. “And you know, we’ve been in the public eye for more than 30 years right now, and all we’ve ever tried to do is protect our children and love our children. And you know, that’s all I really want to say about it.” You can almost hear the roll of Brooklyn’s eyes from here.
Victoria and her husband David Beckham have fully immersed their children in Brand Beckham from birth through micro-managed social media exposure, with a happy-clappy, loving family narrative, often tagging and photographing them to further their public image. They have been trotted out on the front row at fashion shows, paraded on their Netflix documentary, and asked to show up to every Victoria/David Beckham event like one big happy family.
No wonder Brooklyn has resorted to a brand new tattoo that reads “our little bubble” because his life with wife Nicola Peltz in LA has become his safe place. Whether his siblings will eventually feel the same remains to be seen. So far there a few signs of any of the others pulling away, perhaps because they haven’t allowed themselves to believe the love is performative, as Brooklyn claims, or they remain in denial about it – or are firmly loyal.
They are Brand Beckham – it’s all they’ve known. Victoria filed trademarks for all of her children’s names in 2017, covering extensive areas that include everything from beauty, media, electric train sets and ballpoint pens. Last month, it was reported that Harper was set to become the next Kylie Jenner with her own beauty line, which she’s named “HIKU by Harper”.
Harper is going to want a Hermes handbag, not track pants from Gap – and you can bet if she’s ever seen in Gap clothing, it’s only performative
Beckham’s youngest son, Cruz, is being touted by Brand Beckham as music’s next big thing in his indie band The Breakers – like some manufactured Mick Jagger in vintage Saint Laurent. And it can’t get more performative than Cruz penning the song “Loneliest Boy” with the lyrics about “breaking mama’s heart” – which fans are convinced are inspired by Brooklyn and his ongoing estrangement. Gold point for Cruz!
It’s hard for any child to criticise their own parents and take a deep look into a family that is supposedly as perfect as a Beckham Gap T-shirt. In normal circumstances, questioning the motives behind a parent’s actions is an unbearable task.
And there is always the possibility that this Gap collection might genuinely be a nostalgic trip down memory lane for Victoria. “I remember going to Gap with my mum and sister and being so excited by it,” she said in the interview. “Growing up, it was only ever the high street. I wasn’t in a position to wear designer clothes.”
Harper is in a very different place. Her daughter’s life experience isn’t an average home in Hertfordshire, as it was for Victoria growing up, but a Holland Park mega-mansion, an estate in the Cotswolds, a luxury Miami villa, an apartment in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and a £16m superyacht. She’s going to want a Hermes handbag, not track pants from Gap – and you can bet if she’s ever seen in Gap clothing, it’s only performative to help Brand Beckham.