“The Victoria Line,” by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the April 2012 issue of Vogue.

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Have you ever been in a crèche before?” asks Victoria Beckham playfully as she welcomes me to her London studio the week before Christmas. “We get a lot done in our meetings,” she adds, “so it's good to have a baby around so we can have some fun.”

She is perching her daughter, five-month-old Harper Seven Beckham, on one hip, but truth to tell there isn't much of a perch; Victoria retrieved her finely honed form after the birth of her fourth child (Harper joins her whimsically named brothers, Brooklyn Joseph, thirteen; Romeo James, nine; and Cruz David, seven) via a strenuous workout regimen with the

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