Victoria Beckham has been quoted on various occasions as being “unable to concentrate in flat shoes.” That’s not ever something she ever said–I know this because I have just read spent a grueling two minutes reading a 2023 blog post that claims to have parsed through years of press clippings and found zero evidence of such a thing being uttered–but statements like these have nonetheless formed part of the too-Posh-to-push lore.
This is, after all, a woman whose dedication to stilettos is so admirable that she was once rumored to have worn a pair of Saint Laurents whilst doing lengths in a swimming pool at the Baden Baden world cup in 2002. And so, the image of Victoria Beckham in a pair of comfortable sneakers is always going to jar on some level, much like when the designer wore a box-fresh pair of Nike Air Jordans while strolling–read: shuffling on crutches–around Paris yesterday afternoon. (To navigate a metropolitan center in an orthopedic cast and one singular Alaïa pump was perhaps a little gratuitous.) And while this might seem like an extreme and sudden departure from the impervious Victoria Beckham look–reminiscent of the moment she said “I would rather die than wear Crocs,” and then proceeded to pose in Croots–the designer has always been fond of a fashion sneaker.
I am currently making my way through Beckham’s seminal fashion manual–That Extra Half An Inch–in which she lays bare her relationship with clothing. “I am a real high heels girl,” she says via the journalist Hadley Freeman. “And if I do wear flats, they tend to be trainers, sandals or flip-flops, and I am quite picky about all of them. Trainers have to be crisp and white Adidas Y3, white Nike Air Max or Bathing Ape, but never dirty ones of any variety.” The one shoe style she has “little love for,” she says, is the kitten heel. “They make your feet look bigger,” she insists. “There is nothing wrong with big feet, but in this case, they will look out of proportion with your body.”