Beckham, Inc.

By Howie Kahn

WHEN YOU FIRST meet the Beckhams, you don't exactly meet the Beckhams, especially not at a junket for the American launch of their empire — er, new fragrance. First you wait for the Beckhams in a holding room in a sun-dappled suite at L.A.'s Hotel Bel-Air. You sample the bottled goods: This is what the Beckhams smell like! Then you sign a release form: You will not defame the Beckhams. Then you are escorted to them.

David and Victoria stand up to greet you, and you wonder whether the large suited dude crushing your fingers is their one-man security detail. He's not. He's actually a perfume executive, and he'll tell you: "Intimately Beckham has exceeded $100 million in the last 12 months, and next year, we expect the figure to double." He'll offer up the bottom line because Victoria Beckham will ask him to. "Go on," she'll say, "give the numbers."

Victoria Beckham has trophy clavicles and the arms of a flyweight champion. Twin golden blades of hair sweep past her jaw; the diamond on her finger is itself a sparkling fist. She's wearing heels of precarious height and a tiny lavender Hervé Léger dress on which black lines meet at right angles. And when she sits next to her husband (he who famously bends it), Victoria (she who famously spent many Posh years strutting around in a wig and PVC catsuit) looks like the dominant one. This is odd because David is considerably larger than his wife in every way imaginable, yet in person she totally eclipses him.