New York Fashion Week: Victoria Beckham shows her Californian side

The National speaks exclusively to Victoria Beckham at New York Fashion Week - fashion correspondent Gemma Champ interviews the celebrity designer.

Victoria Beckham appears briefly at the end of her fashion show during the Spring/Summer 2013 New York fashion week in New York.

In her second line, Victoria Beckham presented a more relaxed approach to dressing than in her rather formal main line.

Here it's all about the California lifestyle, with pretty shift dresses bearing photographic prints and little design motifs. I chatted to her afterwards, as she held a fidgety Harper Seven (who'd behaved beautifully through the show), and she said insisted the line, which costs between Dh2,500 and Dh6,000, is not simply a diffusion line.

"I haven't compromised on quality," she said. "I think a lot of people have said how expensive the fabrics look, and that was something I was adamant with when I started to design. It's not a second line, it's another line, and no compromise has been made with the fabrics and details."

The designs are inspired by her more relaxed LA lifestyle, and featured a series of relaxed, girlish shift dresses, A-line skirts and high-waisted frocks with digital prints of flowers and the night sky, as well as motifs including cartoon birds and an unusual fluffy take on the polka dot. Beckham's trademark exposed zip detail made several appearances, and the models wore huge platform sandals by Walter Steiger.

"People often ask me is my aesthetic influenced by living in LA, and the truth is that it is normally not, but here I think you can see that it really is," she told The National. "You can see me in the collection, it's the other side to my wardrobe. I think it's very cool. The music [in the show] is 80s hip hop that has been remixed in LA.

"All these girls, these models: I want to be every single one of them, and if I can't be them I want to hang out with them. It's cool, it's effortless, it's not forced, everything is deceptively simple. But a lot of time and thought and effort has gone into every dress in my collection. There's not a single dress I wouldn't wear myself."

So who would she like to see wearing the collection? She wasn't telling: "Would I see them on someone famous? Yeah, I'm sure someone famous would wear them, but that's not my goal. The goal is I want to make women feel empowered and beautiful and confident."