Susannah Frankel: If Posh is wearing something, cross it off your list

Style commandments? If ever there were a woman capable of murdering a look for posterity it must surely be Victoria Beckham.

The St Tropez tan, low-slung jeans and baseball caps, the tiered peasant skirt and, most especially, fly shades have all, in her gloriously incapable hands, gone from must-have to most certainly must not have in mere days.

It hasn't always been that way.

In Spiceworld The Movie, when the girl then dubbed the "posh" member of the band trilled, "what shall I wear? My little Gucci dress? My little Gucci dress? Or my little Gucci dress?" she had a certain sweetly naive charm that ensured fashion was on her side. She also had a sense of irony or appeared to, at least.

Not only that but, back then, Victoria Beckham was not even slightly orange, her hair wasn't extended to the point where only Rapunzel's might rival it and we hadn't all seen endless pictures of her traipsing through the world's most expensive thoroughfares pouting furiously like a Bratz doll on acid. She hadn't yet stepped out in his-and-her black leather catsuit or matching Western styling with her husband, David.

Among her "style commandments", Beckham name-checks Audrey Hepburn as the icon to see and be seen emulating which only begs the question has she ever actually seen Breakfast At Tiffany's or Roman Holiday? She's hardly a Givenchy ankle length black dress and pearls kind of girl.

"I always think, if you're revealing lots of cleavage, you should keep your legs hidden," she tells Glamour magazine with a kind of Confucian wisdom.

The aforementioned Ms Hepburn must surely be spinning in her grave.