The Price of Becoming Posh: What Victoria Beckham Almost Lost to Build Her Fashion Dream
There is a scene in Victoria Beckham’s new Netflix docuseries where the famously stoic pop star-turned-designer is on the verge of tears. She is not talking about a failed song or a tabloid scandal. She is talking about money. “We were tens of millions in the red,” she confesses to the camera, her voice steady but her eyes telling a different story. “I almost lost everything”.
This is the story behind the glamorous image. For years, Victoria Beckham has been a symbol of polished perfection. First as Posh Spice, then as a fashion icon married to a football star, and finally as the founder of her own luxury brand. But her new documentary reveals a difficult truth: the journey from pop star to respected designer brought her to the brink of financial collapse and forced her to confront her own past.
“An Uncool Kid”: The Girl Before Posh Spice
Long before the private jets and the front-row seats at fashion shows, Victoria Beckham was, in her own words, an outsider. “That uncool kid at school that’s awkward, that was me,” she reveals in the series. She was bullied, a loner who found escape only when she was on stage performing. “I didn’t like me,” she admits.
That feeling of not being good enough followed her even after the Spice Girls made her a global superstar. When the band broke up, she found herself lost. “One minute I’m spreading word of girl power, and then the next minute I’m a wife in a flat in Manchester,” she recalls. “I found that transition really, really difficult”.
The Cry for Help: “Tens of Millions in the Red”
Driven by a need for a new purpose, Beckham launched her fashion label in 2008. The fashion world was skeptical. Top designer Tom Ford says his first thought was, “Why? Why would you do this?” Anna Wintour, the powerful editor of Vogue, also admitted she was initially “skeptical” that a celebrity could be a true designer.
Beckham proved them wrong creatively, but the business was bleeding money. Behind the beautiful clothes and positive reviews, a financial crisis was growing. The brand was spending recklessly—on things like “flying chairs from one side of the world to another” and £70,000 on office plants alone.
The situation became desperate. “I used to cry before I went to work every day,” Beckham shares. The losses were so vast that her husband, David Beckham, who had been financially supporting the business, finally had to say enough. “I never saw anything coming back,” David says in the documentary. “It worried me. This isn’t sustainable”.
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The Lifeline and the Fight to Survive
Facing disaster, Victoria was forced to seek outside investment. In 2024, she, David, and their private equity partner Neo injected another £6.2 million into the company . This was on top of millions already loaned in previous years . Recent financial filings show the company is still not in the clear, with pre-tax losses widening to £4.8 million last year.
Yet, there are signs of hope. Sales are growing strongly, rising 26.5% to £112.7 million in 2024, driven by her popular beauty line and online stores . The company’s net liabilities have also decreased, suggesting a slow and difficult path to stability.
More Than a Business: A Personal Reckoning
The documentary also shows a more vulnerable Victoria Beckham. She opens up about a lifelong struggle with an eating disorder, which worsened after she gave birth to her first son and was publicly weighed on national television six months later.
“I’ve been everything from porky Posh to skinny Posh,” she says. “When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying… I could control my weight. And I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way”.
This need for control, she suggests, was a response to a world that constantly criticized her. It is a reminder that the “miserable cow” persona the tabloids loved to hate was really just a woman’s armor.
A Story of Reinvention
Victoria Beckham’s story is a modern parable about the cost of reinvention. She successfully “killed the WAG,” as her mentor Roland Mouret advised, transforming her public image from a glamorous footballer’s wife to a serious, elegant designer. She earned her place in the tough world of high fashion, culminating in a respected spot on the Paris Fashion Week calendar.
But that respect came with a staggering price tag—one that nearly broke her personally and financially. The docuseries shows that the journey to become “Posh” was not about embracing a natural privilege, but about a relentless, and at times painful, pursuit of purpose. The woman who once desperately wanted to be liked had to first save herself, and the business that bears her name, from ruin.
Author: Yasir Khan
Date: 11 Oct, 2025
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