Great Outfits in Fashion History: Victoria Beckham in a Cropped Chanel Jacket

Peak "Coming to America"-era VB.

There are perfectly good celebrity style moments, and then there are the looks that really stick with you, the ones you try desperately to recreate at home. In 'Great Outfits in Fashion History,' Fashionista editors are revisiting their all-time favorite lewks.

Youths out there may not remember, but there was a time in the mid-aughts — after she found superstardom as Posh Spice but before she established herself as a well-respected fashion designer — that Victoria Beckham's primary claim to fame was being the world's most famous footballer WAG. (My fellow Americans, that's short for "wives and girlfriends.") She served as tabloid fodder on both sides of the Atlantic for her marriage to David Beckham, which culminated in the TV special "Victoria Beckham: Coming to America" that served as a tongue-in-cheek take on the self-obsessed persona paparazzi had established for her.

All of this to say: If we must revisit mid-aughts fashion (and certainly, TikTok seems to indicate that it's all but inevitable), we must show our respect to the queens of that era. One particularly strong VB look from that time happened at the Chanel Cruise 2008 show, which took place in an airport hangar in Los Angeles. Beckham wore, believe it or not, vintage Chanel: a skintight black top and pants paired with a cropped teal tweed jacket.

I'm less into the length of the pants (if Gen Z insists on bringing back capris, we will need to have a word), but I do find something fresh in the crop of the jacket. We've already been seeing cropped cardigans on the runways, and while they might not get styled in quite the same way, there's something fun about the shrunken proportions. And besides, the fact that Beckham's jacket was already vintage in 2007 and on the verge of another comeback in 2022 only proves how cyclical fashion is.

Instead of styling a cropped jacket with an asymmetric haircut and a pointed-toe pump, it would be a very modern update to swap in a high-waisted pant and heavy hardware. Of course, a Chanel chain belt never really goes out of style, either. Shop Beckham-inspired picks in the gallery below:

View the 4 images of this gallery on the original article

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