David Beckham: “I Turned Around to Victoria and Said, ‘Do I Need to Dress a Little Bit Cooler?’”

We did a navy linen suit and we did a beige linen suit. We did a pink knit T-shirt that was nice and very, very appropriate for Miami. But on the tailoring, I’ve always loved wearing suits. I like to dress casual. I love a great T-shirt and a pair of jeans, but I also love to dress up. I love to wear well-tailored suits, so we’ve worked very hard with how my aesthetic and my [preferred] fit is slightly different to what some of the Boss items are, so we’ve just kind of adjusted and worked with the team and it seems to have gone down well.

When do you feel like you landed on your current aesthetic, as you put it—the “classic style” era that you’re in?

I think since I started to get a little bit older, in all honesty. I think gone are the days where I’d be too daring. I think I’ll leave that to my kids. My sons are quite daring in what they wear, but my aesthetic is really kind of classic now. It’s very understated. So that probably was, I’d say, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I just started to kind of dress a little bit more understated.

I suppose these days, the only things that I push the boundaries on is I’ve made a wide-leg trouser, an oversized trouser for one of the suits. So, that’s my way of pushing the boundaries, and actually doing something different to what I usually do.

Do you remember the first time that you ever wore a suit?

I was probably about eight years old, funnily enough, and I was part of a soccer team in the UK that every time that we turned up in a game, our coach would make us turn up in a blazer, which wasn’t the normal thing to do. But actually, it set me up for my whole career, because at Manchester United, you were only allowed to turn up in games in a blazer. So it started early.

When you were eight, were you happy about the blazer?

Funnily enough, a lot of my teammates weren’t, but I actually loved the fact that we wore blazers. It’s strange because my dad never really wore suits when I was a young kid. It wasn’t something that I got from him. I think it was actually my granddad. My granddad was always well turned-out.

Courtesy of Boss

Courtesy of Boss

Yeah, I think that especially living in the UK, you see a lot of young kids now going out and actually making more of an effort. In the UK, I’ve got a lot of kids of my friends that go out in full double-breasted suits, shirts and ties and nice shoes, and one of my sons is like that. My youngest son, Cruz, loves to wear a smart suit. He loves to wear a smart suit when he’s just going down the pub, and those things date back to 50 years ago or 100 years ago when people actually used to make more of an effort.

Fashion is such a part of the Beckham family story, and it’s so cool to see how all of your sons and your daughter have embraced it in their own ways. How do you feel like you and Victoria have passed down your sense of style to your children?

These days with social media, they see so much of the past, and they’re always referencing my looks from the ’90s and saying, “Dad, do you still have these jeans? Because I want to wear these jeans. They’re back in now.” So I think we’ve influenced them on that side purely because they see so much of us and how we used to dress.

Is there one look from your past that they’ve brought up that has really surprised you or made you laugh?

I mean, I suppose the leather outfit is one that continues to come up. None of my kids have actually tried to copy it yet, but they’ve mentioned multiple times that they love that look.