Emily Sheffield

The Vogue Cover Interview: Victoria Beckham

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Patrick Demarchelier

It's not every day you have bee pollen for breakfast. And it's not every day it is spooned into your mouth by Victoria Beckham. Yet here we are. And now the gloopy yellow powder has wedged itself, cement-like, to the roof of my mouth and I can't talk. But let's rewind a little.

9.45am on a dewy Thursday in May, and I am pressing the buzzer of the Beckhams' double-fronted white nineteenth-century townhouse in west London, trying not to feel intimidated as security questions are posed in a robotic tone from the intercom. Then the gate pings, the door swings and a maid ushers me in.

Once inside, I am led by Sarah Blundell, Victoria's firm but smiling, blonde PA (the organisation and fervour with which she tackles Victoria's diary is something to witness), past a small, wood-panelled kitchen into a vast cream living room where Damien Hirst butterfly paintings bring the only splash of colour. Sofas sit at one end, an equally oversized dining table dominates the other, with floor-to-ceiling doors to the garden, with its football net at the end (remember where you are). Vases of tightly bound roses and Jo Malone candles decorate tables alongside large photographic and fashion tomes - on Chanel, on her great friend Giancarlo Giammetti. The house is rented, and framed monochrome portraits of the children - including one of Harper giggling in the bath, Victoria bending close - add a homely vibe. (The couple have bought the house opposite, which they are decorating with the help of Rose Uniacke.)

Patrick Demarchelier

Left alone, I inspect the birthday cards lining a nearby chest and the holiday snaps propped up on the mantelpiece, and then I perch uneasily, a little bit lost in a gulf of taupe linen, and wait for VB, a woman so famous she is abbreviated to a monogram. Suddenly, as much as she wasn't there, she is, having slipped silently into the room. She is wearing a Céline navy cashmere sweater, Saint Laurent black tailored trousers and velvet flats, which lend her an understated sophistication. Her hair is slicked back in a neat ponytail, which she pulls through her fingers like a string of worry beads, while a thick, black band tops her unblemished forehead. It's very Audrey Hepburn, and certainly she is as whippet-thin. Forty suits her. She has come of age stylistically, every nuance of Spice Girl erased. "There is something that comes together, the older you get, don't you think?" she asks, her tone chirpy and conspiratorial. Her make-up is light, her nails a dusty rose-pink.

"I'm exhausted," she says, sitting down and looking anything but. She's already completed a 6am training session with Tracy Anderson (five days a week; the morning after her fortieth was the only session she missed) and gathered her four children for school. David is doing the school run today, though usually they share. In one hand she has a frothy green juice prepared by their pretty cook - a large staff contingent keeps Beckham Inc on the road - which she sucks delicately through a straw. In the other, the one with the yellow gobstopper Chopard diamond, she brandishes the aforementioned bag of pollen, a new celebrity health fad. "Twenty-two amino acids, 12 vitamins, 28 minerals," she quips, turning the bag over to read the ingredients. "And please don't write that I'm completely mad!" She offers me a large spoonful. "We can't have wrinkles!" As I attempt to swallow, Victoria pops a spoonful between her own lightly glossed lips. "No, we get with the programme. I've been to LA, I've got the vitamins and the collagen pills… And I need a lot of energy to be buzzing about!"

10.45am, driving to the Vogue cover shoot (only a little bit late)
Another messy chignon by Tina Outen from the August 2014 Vogue shoot.Patrick Demarchelier

Shown safely to the car by the Beckhams' personal security guard (also named David), Victoria squeezes into the back seat alongside Sarah and Natalie, her PR, planting her cream Liberty tote at her feet, legs tucked neatly to one side. She dispenses with some off-the-record calls on the white iPhone - one long and detailed concerning schools, the other to David to check up on the school run - "Love you," she rings off. The diary is loaded. It's her Vogue cover shoot today ("My twelfth," she points out, including all the international titles), then dinner at Chiltern Firehouse tonight with friends from LA, David's birthday tomorrow, a wedding on Saturday, and New York on Sunday for the Met Ball, followed by a fly-by business trip to Singapore for a brand event - she has 400 retail outlets worldwide.

I ask Victoria how she packs. Not happily, she doesn't like it, she replies. "I find it stressful." When she's in designer mode her voice is smooth, controlled and singsong, otherwise it is sharper, funnier; she plays the joker well. Right now it rises as she describes "hours" of preparation, where she tries everything on. She's an overpacker. "Because I like lots of options as I don't know how I will feel in the morning. And I need to ensure I've got the right handbags and the right shoes…" Oh, and she folds, not rolls. As for everyday outfits, "I lie in bed the night before, mentally figuring it out."

This weekend's suitcase will definitely contain a pair of Alaïa lace boots and a Saint Laurent tux. As for the Met, it's a choice between a cream or black Victoria Beckham dress. "We're just working out the diamonds." Then there's the airport "look". "I have to have a travel outfit, which takes a little bit of thought," she describes, in her classic (I am learning) deadpan delivery. "There's normally going to be paparazzi. Which is never that nice. You've been sitting on a flight…"

But where there are cameras, there's a branding opportunity, so she might carry the sleek Victoria matt-leather tote, for instance, in cornflower blue - one of nine styles, plus four versions of the Victoria. And sunglasses, Victoria Beckham aviators with the elegant wire frames which are her favourite and their top-seller, "because no matter how much make-up you have on, there are a lot of flashbulbs, so at least you know you'll never be boss-eyed…"

Patrick Demarchelier

"I don't think you ever get used to that," she continues of the media scrum that still shadows her every move. "I know during fashion week I am going to a Vogue dinner; I have my hair and make-up done and it is what it is. I am always going to look mortified [in paparazzi shots] - you can't see where you're going, you've got someone taking a picture up your skirt… I don't complain about it, but I definitely don't court it." No photographers were camped outside their home, I note. Partly the new privacy laws, partly because "David has spent a lot of time and money protecting his family," she says firmly, with a slow, determined bat of her eyelashes, steel beneath the charm.

Having constructed such a closely guarded private life, she chatters about the children with surprising frequency. But it's integral to her easy charm, this domestic badinage. I learn that their favourite food is sushi. And that every school holiday is spent back in LA, which they all love. "It's the space, it's the can-do, positive attitude, it's the freedom," she lists. It's where, in the morning, they attend SoulCycle en masse: "They bought in some little mini bikes so Romeo and Cruz could do it as well. It was the cutest thing." And they go surfing and hiking; and Gordon and Tana Ramsay often come, too. In London "there's either music playing or football blasting out of the TV, it's a bit of a madhouse," she says of the everyday chaos. Harper hangs out in Victoria's studio after nursery. Weekends are spent ferrying the boys to football and play dates (fancy having David Beckham on your doorstep come teatime?). Brooklyn has a Saturday job working in a café - and was recently papped with actress Chloë Moretz. Victoria insists that she no longer has a social life: socialising is done with the children, often a sushi dinner all together (a lot of sushi goes on, chez Beckham).

"Me time", the holy grail of working mothers, gets lost in the growing momentum of her fashion fiefdom (which now includes her ready-to-wear label, accessories, Victoria by Victoria Beckham, eyewear and denim). She used to find it when she went to work, but that's full-throttle now. "I went in the other day and there were literally five people with laptops standing there as I walked in," she says, putting her hands around her neck in a panicked, squeezing motion. "But neither David or I are lazy. I don't like laziness or cutting corners."

And she's sanguine about turning 40: "I looked at it and said to myself, I have four incredible children, an incredible husband, a business that's doing very, very well. I've worked hard and achieved a lot. I don't think I could have achieved much more…"

Patrick Demarchelier
The Old Rectory, Sussex The Vogue cover


Patrick Demarchelier

Victoria is balanced gamely on a ladder, dressed as the lady of a crumbling English manor in a sweeping tweed Lanvin coat. Victoria doesn't normally do crumbling, but she takes it in her stride. She snip, snips at the rhododendron bush with secateurs, holding her basket as Patrick Demarchelier delivers instructions. Soft rain falls as she turns her head this way and that, upper lip gently pouting. Patrick hovers, we all hover, umbrellas at the ready. Natalie is beside the monitor scrutinising every shot; later Victoria remarks that the pollen and the collagen pills must be working. That or it's Patrick's lighting. Even Digby, the fashion director's dog, hovers at her feet. I'm not sure Victoria likes dogs, but she agrees to hold him. She also gallops along gravelly paths in towering Louboutin boots. She pushes wheelbarrows and dons an apron embroidered with the words Too Posh To Wash. "Quite right," she says. "I don't ever do the washing-up."

In a British Vogue first, she was photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for two covers for the August 2014 issue.
Surviving Barry's Bootcamp

Two days later and I am hovering again. This time waiting for Victoria so we can attend Barry's Bootcamp, her favourite fitness class. I have been instructed by Natalie to wait outside the house until David has left because the PR doesn't want us to meet. But there he is, striding down the stairs, tight black T-shirt, blue jeans with a chain looped out the back pocket and a jaunty cap, those tattoos snaking over taut limbs. I crouch down because my car is feet away from his Audi sport saloon where Brooklyn sits in the passenger seat. Later she will say, "I wouldn't be where I am without David. He gives me the security and encouragement to do what I do. I do the same for him."

Safely inside, Victoria is welcoming and cheerful, while she ushers sleepy-eyed Cruz and Romeo, both dressed in football strips, to their weekly practice. "Work hard, boys," she instructs. She picks up Harper, a gorgeous little thing in a floral-print nightie who is gently twisting her ash-blonde hair under her chin and sucking on a milk bottle by the fridge: "Mummy's going to work out," she tells her, which Harper accepts without question.

Patrick Demarchelier

On our way to the Euston Road, there's competitive chat about who will perform best on the treadmills - Barry's has a fearsome reputation. But there's a holiday atmosphere in the back seat, befitting the bank-holiday weekend. One of the girls from the studio is getting married in Oxfordshire, Victoria explains, and she and David are attending. (With their busy lives, a car journey, just the two of them, "is very nice," she sighs.) "I wonder if she's told her family? Be a bit of shocker in the church, won't it, if all of a sudden we wander in?" She talks, too, about David's birthday lunch the day before. David, she says, doesn't like any fuss, but when the desserts came, "the waiters stood around and sang the most stretched-out version of 'Happy Birthday' you've ever heard, and he was going redder and redder. He said, 'I can't believe you did that!' And I said, 'I didn't, and I'm going to give you a heads-up' - because we took him to Nobu last night - 'me and the kids did buy you a cake for tonight.'" A Marks & Spencer football cake. "But he loved it. He loves a bit of Victoria sponge." Still blessed with a Spice Girl's sense of humour, Victoria is very good at this kind of camp banter.

We clamber out of the cab, Victoria a little sprite in black leggings, bra top and Asics trainers (the best, she says), and enter the dark basement. Victoria quietly admits she might be sick; apparently she took her vitamins on an empty stomach and is feeling distinctly nauseous. Booming pop tunes and army-camouflage walls complete the torture-chamber feel. I watch the customers do discreet double takes as they see her take her place. A man with flaccid cheeks and a comedy headband lets his mouth drop slackly open as she nonchalantly wanders past.

There follow 55 minutes of gasping, sweating and acute discomfort (mine). As I catch my breath, I notice how thin her face is in the mirror. Victoria powers forward, seemingly unfazed by the effort, looking dead ahead, focused, ignoring the sweat (which gathers, ladylike, in fine rivulets, not smudging the finely applied mascara), as her tiny, sinuous arms pump weights fit for a man. Behold Britain's new iron lady. As we finish, she continues stretching, twisting her leg back and round in such a severe contortion that I fear for those slender limbs.

Patrick Demarchelier

"I used to come here with David for the 6am class when we first moved back from LA," she explains afterwards. But now it's all about Tracy Anderson. Her daily sessions began in LA, she says, resting momentarily on a squishy leather sofa. "I had dinner, funnily enough, with Gwyneth and Valentino, and I said to Gwyneth, 'I've seen pictures of you recently and your body is amazing…' So I started while I was pregnant and got addicted. It's very challenging," she says of the new regimen. "Like this, but harder." The downside is the lack of sleep - the classes get her up at 5.30am, while bed, she says, is often after 11pm, as Brooklyn is up until 10pm. "Afterwards, that's when me and David have time together."

On the way out, I thank her for sweating next to a journalist. "Oh no, I loved it," she throws back over her shoulder, mounting the stairs. "Let's think of another activity. What about paintballing?"

Meanwhile, back in the studio…
Patrick Demarchelier

Victoria Beckham is funny, except when she is in the mode of Victoria Beckham: international designer. That's a whole lot more considered and serious - even a little bit scary. Forty-five minutes into a spring/summer '16 sunglasses meeting with her team, including the head designer, Sunshine (yes, really), the sombre mood is finally lifting. They are debating the frames of their "rimless round" design. "Well, let's look at the horn," says Victoria, turning frequently to the wall of mirrors that faces her desk, to check how the glasses sit on that delicate bridge. A black T-shirt and Comme des Garçons skirt hang loose, accentuating her narrow hips, above pale suede wedges. "Maybe the natural wood as well. There's something nice about leather and wood and horn, like a hunting horn…" She's starting to laugh, drawing out the emphasis on horn. "I came in today and I just thought, 'hunting horn'. Something that looks heritage-ish… I know that's not a word. That's the jet lag. But I like it, let's put heritage-ish down!"

The studio is in Battersea, sandwiched inside the offices of Simon Fuller's XIX Entertainment, which also represents Beckham and Andy Murray - giant glossy posters of them hang in the lacquered red-and-white reception. The small atelier has outgrown its original space and overflowed on to two floors, with moodboards and sample rails jostling for space. Outside Victoria's office, her lunch (sushi again) is already laid out. Having just returned from Singapore, tomorrow morning she flies to Jakarta for a series of in-store launches. The pace is relentless. "I found myself last night sitting around the living-room table trying to have a meeting with Manolo Blahnik," she says. "Romeo comes in covered in mud from football, starts to talk, then goes out." Her voice picks up speed in a hurried stage whisper. "Brooklyn comes in, says he's leaving for football, then Harper comes in ready for bed…" She draws breath and loops that long ponytail through her fingers, tucking it over her shoulder. "Tomorrow we leave again. Trying to squeeze everything in to two days and then the rest of today is a big sign off for the pre-collection, so it's quite full-on…" She exits, begging our leave; she has a scheduled call with one of her sons' headmasters.

Patrick Demarchelier
Supermarket sweep, VB-style
Patrick Demarchelier

What does Victoria Beckham wear to the supermarket? For today, it's Saint Laurent silk tapered trousers, a Céline burgundy sweater and vertiginous black Manolos. Although these days, she says, heels are rare: "Since living in London I am always in flats - flat, Prada-y, slip-on things or Vans - but I'm in development this week and trying on the clothes and the toiles, so I need a bit of height." Waitrose, Whole Foods and Marks & Spencer are her usual destinations. "I like going to the supermarket myself. I'm not saying I go all the time, but then, you know, you're going to get exactly what you want." Her daily motto, I hazard.

In the car - a chauffeur-driven Range Rover - we cover the decorating plans. She's incredibly talkative this morning. She was with Uniacke until 11.30pm last night: "I have help, but myself and David have very specific taste. We know what we like, but I just want it finished." We cover how she likes being girly and what advice she would give her teenage self. "Well, I wouldn't do anything differently," she considers. "I've always worked hard and had a lot of fun, so there's nothing I would change. But I was very self-conscious… My weight was always up and down and my skin was always a problem." And we talk about how David is taking the boys to the World Cup before they go to LA for August but how, really, she has done her fair share of watching football matches now (unless it's the boys, of course). She also relates a very funny anecdote about losing a sports-day parents' race because she was roadtesting tight, new Victoria Beckham flares that day (she's not competing this year, no).

Then there are the summer plans: the Rihanna and Eminem gig at the Rose Bowl in LA ("very excited") and a gnashing of teeth - just gently, mind - because they are missing Pharrell and Bruno Mars at the Hollywood Bowl. Finally there's the new 7,000sq ft store in Dover Street to discuss. It's opening in September, although the details are a bit hush-hush for now. It will be "quite conceptual", she says, "and made with materials I won't get sick of." She's excited: "It's the first time customers can see and feel the brand through my eyes."

But right now we're lurking in the fruit section of a Marks & Spencer in Notting Hill (as it happens, a photographer is also lurking; Victoria's picture is on Mail Online within the hour). Victoria plucks cartons of white cherries from the fridge, while Natalie rummages in unpacked boxes, asking for feta-cheese salad. "PR acting a little starry in Marks - note it's not me requesting a salad from the bottom of the boxes these poor men are unloading!" - then adding to Natalie, with her low, short laugh: "I'm pretending I don't know you…"

What VB usually buys: David, I learn, likes éclairs, the boys sponge pudding and custard. ("Ambrosia, no other.") As for Victoria, she favours savoury over sweet, and generally it's a lot of fish and vegetables, no milk or cheese, and no, she doesn't pick at the children's tea (iron lady, iron will). "I was vegan for over a year but I just felt like I didn't have the energy that you need," she comments as she sashays, perfectly poised on those heels and those pins, shiny hair swishing, to the check-out to pay with her black bank card: a woman who wouldn't change anything, who has achieved it all, and leaves the Marks staff smiling joyously in her wake…