Victoria Beckham launches her DVB line at Saks Fifth Avenue. Photo: Patrick McMullan
The jury is still out on whether Americans can be forced to care about David Beckham — the whiny-voiced British footballer plays his last game for Real Madrid this weekend, after which he’ll descend upon L.A.— but if yesterday’s Saks Fifth Avenue appearance is any indication, we’ve already made up our minds about his wife, Victoria. The former Spice Girl was there to launch her new sunglasses and denim line, DVB, and initially it seemed as if a lot of people showed up. But as we listened closely to the confused buzzing behind cell-phone-camera flashes, giggles, and tittering from starstruck shoppers, we overheard one person explaining that “Angelina Jolie is here to promote her new clothes,” while a Saks security guy admitted, “We’ve got people all the way down the block. But it’s majority press that’s here.”
Beckham, in skinny white jeans, a silver-sequin tank, silver stilettos, and a platinum bob, did indeed look tiny but wasn’t as scarily skinny as paparazzi report. True to form, she did not smile once, and in fact she looked a little nervous — a sweaty onlooker described her, accurately, as “boring and sour.” The question everyone wanted answered was “What do you think of your new best friend Katie Holmes’s haircut?” But Beckham would deign to answer only one question. When a reporter from a celebrity weekly asked how her clothing line was going, she replied, “Good.” Her name recognition here? Not so good. —Shira Levine
