When you’re David Beckham, the grind never stops. Even if that means shooting a campaign for hours outside in the pouring Miami rain. “My goodness. It’s not just rainy, it’s torrential,” Beckham told me by phone earlier this month, once he’d escaped to the comfort of a dry car. “It’s okay. Could be worse. At least it’s warm.” Nothing like the sunshine and blue skies Beckham encountered when he shot the campaign for his debut menswear collaboration with the German label Boss, which drops today. Last May, the soccer legend signed a multiyear design deal to create clothing that would emulate his signature personal style, which the 49-year-old admits has mellowed out over the last decade. The debut Boss x Beckham collection reflects his contemporary fondness for smart English suiting and easygoing casualwear, with linen kits in navy and khaki, soft tees and trousers, and even a spin on the baker boy cap, one of the Beckhams’ many hats of choice. (The capsule was preceded by Beckham’s Boss One bodywear campaign, which, when it dropped in January, featured images so steamy that they inspired David’s wife, Victoria Beckham, to caption one with “My boss” on Instagram.) Ahead of the launch, Beckham and I chatted about his style evolution, his longtime love of tailoring, and the one ’90s outfit his kids can’t stop asking him about. GQ: Fashion has always been a part of your life and career. How did this codesigning opportunity with Boss come to you? David Beckham: To be honest, I’ve always really looked to get into, not the fashion industry, but in a way where I don’t have to do so much similar to my wife, because my wife, she’s full in. Everything that she does with her brand, she does everything, whereas I obviously have a different business. I have multiple things that I’m doing, so I wanted something where I could jump into a great company with a great history, and create a collection that eventually I will design. At the moment, it’s a collaboration, but working with Boss has been incredible. When they first approached me about the idea, I was quite excited about it because I’ve been looking for some kind of tailoring collaboration. And then when I sat down with [CEO] Daniel Grieder, I loved his vision. I loved where he wanted to take it. I love where he wanted to go with it, and the commitment also to what we wanted to do as well. It was a real collaboration, because he listened to me, I listened to him. I worked well with his team, they’ve worked well with my team, and really, that’s how it all started. And then he told me, “Okay, but we are going to have to do a bodywear campaign.” And I was like, “Really? I’m almost 50. I wasn’t planning on getting back into my underwear again publicly.” But he said, “Well, this is what we want to do.” And I said, “Okay, well, give me 14 weeks. I’m going to train for it.” And then, yeah, we did it. It’s been good so far. What was the training process? Well, I always train anyway, so there’s a good foundation there. But if I was going to do it—if I wanted to get back in my underwear at 50 years old—I wanted to go all out and make sure that I was tip-top shape. I did a 14-week [diet of] no carbs, no bread, no butter, no pasta, no pizzas, no alcohol, and just trained like crazy for 14 weeks. Because I knew what Boss were putting into this, and I knew I would be working with [photographers] Mert and Marcus again, so it was a real team effort to get back into real good shape and to do the best campaign. Totally. You mentioned that working with Boss would mean getting to explore tailoring. What about that was exciting to you? How did you contribute to that part of the design process? I think obviously, being from England, we’ve got a rich history of tailoring, and it’s something that I’ve always loved. I have a very particular aesthetic these days. It’s all very classic styles and timeless looks, and understated more than anything else. It’s a very classic style that I’ve been working with with the Boss team. Obviously, for this collection, it being spring-summer ’25, there’s some great linen suits in there, which will be perfect for the summer. Those are actually some of my favorite items. We did a navy linen suit and we did a beige linen suit. We did a pink knit T-shirt that was nice and very, very appropriate for Miami. But on the tailoring, I’ve always loved wearing suits. I like to dress casual. I love a great T-shirt and a pair of jeans, but I also love to dress up. I love to wear well-tailored suits, so we’ve worked very hard with how my aesthetic and my [preferred] fit is slightly different to what some of the Boss items are, so we’ve just kind of adjusted and worked with the team and it seems to have gone down well. When do you feel like you landed on your current aesthetic, as you put it—the “classic style” era that you’re in? I think since I started to get a little bit older, in all honesty. I think gone are the days where I’d be too daring. I think I’ll leave that to my kids. My sons are quite daring in what they wear, but my aesthetic is really kind of classic now. It’s very understated. So that probably was, I’d say, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I just started to kind of dress a little bit more understated. I suppose these days, the only things that I push the boundaries on is I’ve made a wide-leg trouser, an oversized trouser for one of the suits. So, that’s my way of pushing the boundaries, and actually doing something different to what I usually do. Do you remember the first time that you ever wore a suit? I was probably about eight years old, funnily enough, and I was part of a soccer team in the UK that every time that we turned up in a game, our coach would make us turn up in a blazer, which wasn’t the normal thing to do. But actually, it set me up for my whole career, because at Manchester United, you were only allowed to turn up in games in a blazer. So it started early. When you were eight, were you happy about the blazer? Funnily enough, a lot of my teammates weren’t, but I actually loved the fact that we wore blazers. It’s strange because my dad never really wore suits when I was a young kid. It wasn’t something that I got from him. I think it was actually my granddad. My granddad was always well turned-out. Have you noticed how people are getting back into suits these days? It’s becoming more of a trend. Yeah, I think that especially living in the UK, you see a lot of young kids now going out and actually making more of an effort. In the UK, I’ve got a lot of kids of my friends that go out in full double-breasted suits, shirts and ties and nice shoes, and one of my sons is like that. My youngest son, Cruz, loves to wear a smart suit. He loves to wear a smart suit when he’s just going down the pub, and those things date back to 50 years ago or 100 years ago when people actually used to make more of an effort. Fashion is such a part of the Beckham family story, and it’s so cool to see how all of your sons and your daughter have embraced it in their own ways. How do you feel like you and Victoria have passed down your sense of style to your children? These days with social media, they see so much of the past, and they’re always referencing my looks from the ’90s and saying, “Dad, do you still have these jeans? Because I want to wear these jeans. They’re back in now.” So I think we’ve influenced them on that side purely because they see so much of us and how we used to dress. Is there one look from your past that they’ve brought up that has really surprised you or made you laugh? I mean, I suppose the leather outfit is one that continues to come up. None of my kids have actually tried to copy it yet, but they’ve mentioned multiple times that they love that look. What I love about my kids is they’ve all got their sense of style, and they’ve all got their take on what looks good and what feels good, and that’s what I love about my kids and their style. They’re willing to take a risk. They’re willing to do something different, and they’re not scared about it. They’re not self-conscious about wearing something different. They’ll wear it because they like it, not just because it’s the trend. We’re very lucky with our kids on that side. How would you describe their individual tastes? Like I said about Cruz’s taste, he’s very dandy. He likes to wear a double-breasted plaid suit. Romeo, he loves the Balenciaga style, the oversized things. Brooklyn’s quite classic. Harper’s like her mum. She’s quite understated and low-key, Harper. She doesn’t wear things that are too much. She’s very, very, very kind of understated. In your Netflix documentary, there’s that amazing scene where you’re going through your closet and explaining how you prepare outfits in advance. With this collection, were you thinking about how fashion fits into your daily life? To be honest, I always think about what I’m wearing ahead of time, even sometimes a week ahead of time. I’m always planning. I know exactly what I’m wearing every single day, and it very rarely changes. On the design side, it’s more of a collaboration than me going in there and being the designer, but I know what I like. I feel that I know what people like and what guys want to wear. Whether they’re 18 or 28 or 50 or 70, I feel that the collection really hits all those different ages. It’s built into my daily life because I actually care what I wear. We were talking about it the other day [when] I turned around to Victoria and said, “Do you think I need to dress a little bit cooler?” And she said, “Well, you are cool because you don’t really make an effort. You make an effort in a discreet way, rather than it being kind of fake, like you’re trying to be cool. You’re not trying to be cool, so it actually makes you cool.” I think that’s good advice. It’s very good advice, and she’s always right. She’s always right. It’s a problem. It’s good to have someone around who’s always right! Yeah, I know, I know. That’s what she keeps telling me. There are some lovely linen suits in the collection. If you close your eyes and imagine you’re wearing this linen suit, can you describe the perfect place you’d be wearing it? What’s the scene? Who are you with? Definitely by the water. I would say by the water in Italy somewhere, with the kids, with Victoria, going out to one of my favorite lunch places. I think that would be the perfect evening to wear one of the linen suits. What’s on the menu? I would have to say as much pasta as possible. I love pasta, and any kind of seafood, and meat. I love meat. Victoria loves seafood. And some kind of maybe ... I don’t know. You know in Italy when they do that amazing vanilla ice cream with the dark cherries on the top? That would be [ideal] for me. That sounds pretty blissful. Yeah. I like the sound of that. Summer’s coming up. I hope that you get to have that very trip sometime soon. And you can wear the Boss linen suit. And I’m going to wear the Boss suit and everything that comes with it. This interview has been edited and condensed.