Victoria Beckham - a fashionista is born

For the last time ever, Girl Power's set to rock New York as the Spice Girls' blockbuster reunion tour stops at Nassau Coliseum Thursday and Newark's Prudential Center Sunday and Monday. And all eyes will be on one Spice - Posh, aka Victoria, aka Mrs. David Beckham. She's always been a skinny, buxom clotheshorse, a fact Posh acknowledges on tour when she does a tongue-in-cheek sashay down an onstage catwalk as faux paparazzi bulbs flash.But in the last few months, Victoria's morphed from fashion punch line to a bone fide style icon. How'd she do it? For starters, with the help of Marc Jacobs, who's tapped the singer/sports world spouse as his latest muse. Victoria stars in MJ's newest ads; or more exactly, her legs and feet do, as the best-known image is of her sprawling out of a giant shopping bag, with only stilettos and calves on show. Victoria's also lent her naked form to MJ's latest batch of anti-skin- cancer tees. Baring all with her are Oscar winner Hilary Swank and supermodel Naomi Campbell. The price of Posh Spice's tee has zoomed past the others, a sure sign of her soaring celebrity.
Another one of Victoria's fashion fairy godfathers is Juergen Teller. Tonight, Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea debuts its latest show by the superstar lenser. Amid pieces from his exhibit at the Venice Biennale last year, you'll find snaps of Vicky B., whom Teller photographed for those grainy, downtown-cool ads. Together, the fashion and art cred of Teller and Jacobs have helped Beckham emerge from the cartoonish shadow of Posh Spice as Victoria, First Lady of Style.
"Juergen has this amazing esthetic, Marc has this fun sensibility, and it's the combination of those two things," agrees Life & Style magazine's fashion director Elianna Placas. "It's bringing her to a much broader audience, making people more tolerant and they can see her as more fun."
Indeed, despite a facial expression in pap snaps that looks like she has simultaneously stubbed her toe and swallowed a raw lemon, Vicky B. is famous off-camera for her wit and self-deprecation.While La Beckham is a departure from Jacobs' usual hipster muses (see Sofia Coppola and Charlotte Rampling), her appointment is not without precedent. "Look, he had Lil' Kim, and he really gave her a makeover, too," says Placas. "He loves to have someone fun and outrageous and outside of the norm."