DUBLIN -- Fans from near and far got what they really really really wanted on Friday night when the ultimate 1990s girl band, the Spice Girls, opened their long awaited reunion tour at last in Dublin.
"We have been fans for 20 years at least...but we have only been to see impersonators. This is our first time with the real live Spice Girls," said Erica Rozario, 32, from Toronto, in Baby Spice-esque pigtails and a Scary Spice leopard-skin top.
"Are we excited? We're off the scale!"
The British pop group, which shot to global fame telling you what they "really really want" in their bouncy debut single "Wannabe" in 1996, announced their reunion tour last year.
Melanie Brown (Scary Spice), Geri Horner (Ginger Spice), Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) and Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) will play 13 dates over the next few weeks, starting with Dublin on Friday before performing in cities around Britain.
The fifth member, Victoria Beckham, now a successful fashion designer and part of a global celebrity family brand with soccer-player husband David, is not joining them but wished "good luck to the girls" on Instagram on Friday.
"TODAY IS THE DAY!" the band wrote on their Twitter page, with a poster for the "Spice World" tour showing most gigs, including Friday's and the last three in London, as sold-out.
Fans, many dressed in the girls' signature outfits, swarmed around Croke Park, Ireland's largest stadium.
"It's 21 years in the making. I saw them on TV in 1998 and cried because I couldn't go," said 32-year old fan Aisling Leahy. Her brother Emmet, 27, said he was devastated his "idol" Posh was not performing.
But Mandy Phelan, 23, who was walking to the stadium in a short Union Jack dress and orange platform boots, was less fussed: "We're not mad on Posh, to be honest. If they were missing Baby or Ginger that would be a problem," she said.
She added: "It'll be 90s nostalgic great."
The 13-date tour is the latest reunion for the band which broke up in 2000. They reunited for a tour in 2007-2008 and also performed at the closing ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics.
Earlier this week, Brown told fans she had suffered a health scare from inflamed eyes. Sharing a picture of a bandaged eye, she said she now had to get "a very cool Scary eye patch".
"I can't tell you how excited I am about getting this tour on the road!" Bunton wrote on Instagram on Thursday beside a picture of herself at Dublin's Croke Park stadium.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LONDON -- Untested in the fashion world, Victoria Beckham launched her VB label in 2008 in New York, across the Atlantic from her native Britain.
A decade on, she will exhibit at London Fashion Week for the first time on Sunday, in a triumphant homecoming of sorts for a now widely-respected designer and entrepreneur.
The ex-Spice Girls singer oversees an empire comprising four clothing lines, more than 400 retail outlets in over 50 countries and offices in London and New York.
At the outset Beckham, a longtime fashionista, faced a daunting challenge: convincing a competitive and demanding industry that she could make a lasting impression on fickle fashion fans.
Seizing the opportunity to surpass her status as a pop star and the original footballer's WAG -- meaning wives and girlfriends -- she has gradually earned widespread recognition, even from fashion luminaries such as Karl Lagerfeld, the creative genius behind Chanel.
"Many saw her as just another example of a celebrity wanting to have a fashion range with no formal fashion training," Andrew Groves, a professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster, told AFP.
"Through hard work and determination, she has proved those early critics wrong."
EVOLUTION
In the space of a decade, Beckham, 44, has ventured into accessories, expanded sales internationally and online and multiplied collaborations with the likes of Reebok, Target and Estee Lauder.
Her style has also evolved, from the chic classicism that marked her first steps into haute couture to the more daring cuts and vibrant colors -- neon orange, mint green, lilac -- of more recent offerings.
"It's been an incredible journey, even when things can be challenging. I've had to learn incredibly quickly," she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper recently.
She claims the secret of her success is a tireless work ethic and the support of her family -- football superstar husband David and their 4 children.
Beckham was blunt about the ambition for her brand "to get bigger and bigger", in a 2013 interview with The New York Times Magazine.
That came a step closer in 2017 with the formation of her Victoria Beckham Limited (VBL) company thanks to a £30 million ($39 million, 34 million euros) injection from private equity firm NEO Investment Partners.
It valued the brand at £100 million, according to Business of Fashion magazine.
'EMPIRE'
However, VBL will look to reduce its losses, which reached £8.5 million at the end of 2016 -- nearly double the previous year, according to its most recent financial results.
"Running deficits of that volume is not unique in this industry and not necessarily a sign that she is any the less credible," Naomi Braithwaite, a fashion marketing and branding lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, told AFP.
"It takes a time to build a brand and she is competing with labels that have a very long established history."
Groves added that Beckham has "all the right elements to last for many years as a medium-sized designer brand".
He noted her stated desire to build "an empire" hints at the overriding desire to continue to defy the early doubters.
As for the Spice Girls, the most famous girlband in history has reformed for a 13-date tour in 2019 but without "Posh Spice", who has drawn a line under her first life as a pop star, according to British media.
British Vogue magazine featured Beckham surrounded by her children on its October cover under the headline "fashion gets real".
"That's what I'm doing now," she told the magazine.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
