She Knows Ball
It's Time To Give Victoria Beckham's WAG Style The Respect It Deserves
Back then, tabloids laughed. Now, the fashion industry has caught up.
Fashion’s go-to muse lately? Sports. Athletes’ uniforms have landed in every It girl’s closet (soccer jerseys, track shorts, cleats — you name it), M&S staged a runway show on a Formula One pit lane, WNBA tunnel walks are must-see fashion moments, and WAGs are now fashion week regulars.
Sure, fashion is fully in its sports era, especially buoyed by the 2026 FIFA World Cup. But while plenty of people are hopping on the bandwagon now, one woman perfected her game-day fashion more than 20 years ago: Victoria Beckham. And to this day, no one is doing it like her.
Her Posh Spice bandage dresses will always be iconic, and the razor-sharp tailoring of her current quiet luxury aesthetic finally earned the fashion industry’s respect, but Victoria’s greatest style hits arguably happened in the years in between.
Some of the former Spice Girl’s best looks were served from the sidelines of her husband David Beckham’s soccer games in the mid-2000s. While he was on the pitch, Victoria wore unexpected outfits in the stands. It was her peak WAG era — wives and girlfriends, as they’re known in the sports world — and she transformed each match into her own personal runway.
WAG History 101
The term “WAG” first gained traction in 2002. According to the Telegraph, the staff of a beach club in Dubai coined the label to refer to Victoria and her crew. Cheryl Cole, Coleen Rooney, Abbey Clancy, and Elen Rivas cheered for their partners on the England national team alongside Victoria during the 2006 World Cup, and that’s when the WAG media frenzy peaked.
At the time, being a WAG didn’t hold the same cachet it does today. While Jordyn Woods and her lucky purse and Alexandra Leclerc and her paddock ’fits are beloved now, it was a different story back then. At the time, the fashion industry wanted nothing to do with them, tabloids mocked them (dubbing them “hooligans with Visas”), and, after England got knocked out in the quarterfinals, some even blamed the women.
No Team Merch Here
Years after the Spice Girls split, she traded her Posh looks (usually all black everything) for her game-day uniform: tank tops, itty-bitty minis, and her signature oversize sunglasses. Unlike today’s WAGs, who dress in support of their partners, repping their team colors à la Coco Jones or their jersey numbers like Taylor Swift, Victoria dressed in her own way.
She showed team spirit only on rare occasions with low-key “England” emblem tops but typically chose unrelated graphic tanks, which she’d pair with micro jorts or skirts. She’d complete the look with noughties staples, including trucker caps and belts with oversize buckles.
While present-day Victoria is quiet luxury personified, wearing only the most streamlined, timeless pieces, her 2000s wardrobe alter ego was a sign of the times: chaotic with a dash of indie sleaze (complimentary). Her game-day looks are exactly the vibe fashion’s current It girls are nostalgic for. Today, Bella Hadid and Lili Reinhart are all for an edgy graphic cropped top, and micro mini skirts have been spotted on the likes of Katy Perry and Millie Bobbie Brown.
Birkins On Birkins
The real stars of her ’fits however, were her Hermès Birkins — she’s rumored to have more than a hundred. (Today, a new model would cost anywhere from $13,500 to $450,000.)
Toting an exclusive and expensive accessory to watch soccer was loud, brazen, and delightfully obnoxious. The thought of a bag worth six figures sitting on the dirty floor of a stadium could seem gauche, yet Vic doing it was chic. While Kim Kardashian and Paige Paul have made toting ultra-pricey bags to matches commonplace, Victoria did it first.
It’s no surprise that, upon launching her eponymous fashion label in 2008, Victoria made a point of shedding her WAG reputation due to her treatment in the mid-2000s. In Victoria Beckham, her 2025 three-part Netflix docuseries, she shared how designer Roland Mouret, her mentor, advised her to ditch the WAG image to help with the brand.
Still, the label wasn’t well received. The industry was skeptical of her design career. Even Anna Wintour confessed to dismissing her brand as a “side gig” in the Netflix series. Fortunately, the industry eventually came around. In 2011, Victoria’s label was awarded the British Fashion Awards Designer Brand of the Year. This January, she was honored with the prestigious Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. And while that recognition is rightful, her WAG era isn’t always appreciated as fashion canon even though it deserves its flowers.
There’s a reason Victoria Beckham is still a fashion icon 20 years later — in part it’s due to her ability to pivot from indie sleaze to sleek and timeless. The graphic tops and Birkins may be back, but no one is as committed to turning a sporting event into a fashion moment like Victoria was — even if her heels were borderline sinking in the grass.
