Victoria Beckham’s personal brand of Girl Power has been made official as she is named the UK’s number one entrepreneur by Management Today magazine after her fashion empire has grown to be worth over £30 million in only five years.
When she began the label with just three employees in 2008 high-fashion naysayers waited with baited breath to bad-mouth the former Spice Girl’s designs, but from her first salon show in New York she had the editors won over with her carefully tailored and universally flattering dresses.
Crucially, she’s won over many-a luxury shopper too, seeing sales of her collection’s shoppers rocket year-on-year. Andrew Saunders, who compiled the list of the UK’s top business people, which also includes Amit & Meeta Patel, founders of pharmaceutical group Auden Mckenzie, and Mahmud Kamani of Boohoo.com in second and third place, told The Telegraph, ‘she's got a real business, some design talent and some business nous’.
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Many of celebrities have managed to break into the fashion arena with high street collaborations, but few have managed to rival traditional design houses in the way that Beckham has. ‘She gets a lot of stick for being a celeb fashionista but I don't think that's fair’, continues Saunders. ‘She has built something real out of her own celebrity which is quite a contemporary story. She deserves to be celebrated’.
Having just opened her very first stand-alone shop in Mayfair, Victoria’s got all the more reason to celebrate. Customers can now get their hands on her deliciously luxurious leather goods and low-key but high-impact collections in the welcoming and luxurious environment that she’s created in the new Dover Street outpost. She describes her staff as ‘just warm people that believe in my brand and appreciate luxury, but also know exactly what they are talking about’, which is just what time-poor, cash-rich businesswomen like Victoria will be looking for.
Leading the way for women to feel powerful is what she’s been doing since Wannabe was released, and it looks like that’s not about to stop any time soon.