LONDON - Victoria Beckham guides a visitor through her fall 2010 collection, spread on a rack in her studio here. She draws out a dress recently worn by Cameron Diaz, identifying its fabric authoritatively as a metallic jacquard.

Another, crisp as corn flakes, was made of gazar. “Gazar, I love it,” Ms. Beckham murmurs, savoring the term like a vintage Bordeaux. She has mastered fashion with the same passion that has marked her other pursuits - the voice and music lessons that laid the foundations for her career as the pop idol known as Posh Spice; her marriage to the British soccer star David Beckham ; her wardrobe, engineered to show off her whippet frame and improbably lusty chest.

“I don’t do anything by halves,” she says. “If you’re going to do something, do it properly, I think.” In recent months Ms. Beckham has emerged as an industry force. She has been a fixture at presentations like those of Chanel and Marc Jacobs. Her sinuous cocktail dresses have been worn by Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore and Ms. Diaz and are showcased in stores alongside luxury labels like Narciso Rodriguez and Vera Wang.

“Don’t underestimate her,” said Anna Wintour of Vogue, among the many editors and retailers who have embraced her. “She’s growing up,” said Ken Downing, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus. “Her knowledge of dressmaking is impressive. She understands how to bring out the best in the female form.” As important, he said, “She knows how good clothes feel when they’re on. Because she has worn them.”


Sinuous designs by a
former Spice Girl win
respect.


Good clothes are a necessary adjunct to a life spent basking in the public eye. Ms. Beckham has sashayed along fashion runways, modeled in high-profile advertising campaigns and appeared as a guest on television shows like “Ugly Betty” “Project Runway” and “American Idol.” Her dresses, once so corseted that they gave off a whiff of kitsch, are loosening up .

“My style has relaxed a bit,” she said. “I think you will see that in this next collection.” As a designer, Ms. Beckham, by her own account, is a wobbly work in progress. “I’m very aware that I’m working my way up the ladder,” she said. With her business partner, Simon Fuller, the creator of “American Idol,” she presides over a luxury brand encompassing dresses, denim, sunglasses and a line of handbags.

Her dresses attract clients ready to pay for a Grecian-draped tunic or urn-shaped cocktail dress. Their growing allegiance contributed to sales in excess of $7 million last year, said Zach Duane, the company’s senior vice president for business development .

Ms. Beckham, he indicated, can take much of the credit for the label’s success. “She is incredibly involved in pricing, wanting to know where we’re at in terms of turnover, and how the costs are being managed,” he said. She is certainly integral to the design process, draping her dresses on herself.

“ I’m not claiming to be a master draper,” she said. “The bottom line is: Would I wear this?” Ms. Beckham has just won a British Fashion Council nomination as Designer Brand of the Year. At Bergdorf Goodman, her dresses, which sell from about $1,500 to $3,700, “are among the highest sell-through performers,” said Jim Gold, chief executive of the luxury retailer.

The dresses are made in England and carried in 20 stores around the world. And though she may like the taste of victory, she is still being criticized by some industry insiders who tagged her as another in a long line of pop stars to brand her initials on someone else’s frocks.

She responds with self-deprecation. “I’m so camp; such a gay man trying to get out,” she likes to say. Her sauciness has endeared her to no less a cultural arbiter than Marc Jacobs, who featured her in an ad campaign. Mr. Jacobs’s embrace helped redeem her in the eyes of the fashion cognoscenti. “I want to build something that’s very respected,” Ms. Beckham said . Her career, she added, “is about getting things right. I want to make sure I’m in this position in 20 years’ time.”