A week after Brooklyn Beckham launched his social media grenade, publicly exposing a year-long family feud with a defiant statement separating himself from his parents, the fallout continues to unfold across Instagram. While Brooklyn concluded his initial post by insisting that he and his wife Nicola Peltz wish to lead their life together privately, their strategic Instagram activity in recent days has done anything but quell the controversy. Instead, it has intriguingly fuelled the narrative, with their latest carousels of loved-up snaps from a luxurious Malibu getaway bearing a strangely familiar resemblance to posts historically shared by David and Victoria Beckham.
Restaurant Romance and Mirror Images
Following the Instagram bombshell, Brooklyn and Nicola retreated to the exclusive San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, a favourite haunt of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. At this luxury venue, where room rates range from £2,245 to an astonishing £9,069 per night, the couple have offered their combined 20 million followers a glimpse into their no-expense-spared trip. One particularly telling snap shared by Brooklyn shows him planting a kiss on Nicola during a romantic dinner. This image serves as a near-perfect mirror to a 2019 social media post from his parents, which features a smiling David kissing Victoria, who notably sports the same puckered-up facial expression as Nicola in the recent photo.
Copycat Selfies and Public Displays of Affection
The parallels extend beyond dinner dates. Bringing their PDA to Instagram, one picture shows Nicola blowing a kiss at the camera as Brooklyn smiles warmly in the background. This selfie, captured at a white-clothed dinner table, bears a striking similarity to one David posted with Victoria during a recent dinner date. It appears that, away from professional photocalls and stage-managed shoots, both couples share an affinity for the humble, intimate selfie. In another particularly PDA-packed photo, the couple are seen kissing in their hotel bathroom, with Brooklyn dressed in his underwear and a t-shirt. This, too, echoes a snap shared by his parents in 2023, which sees Victoria leaning up to kiss a shorts-clad David.
Stylistic Echoes and Fashion Parallels
During the vacation, Brooklyn proudly snapped a photo of his wife looking glamorous in a black halterneck dress, styled with heels. This date-night look would not have looked out of place on Victoria Beckham, who is renowned for her signature black dresses and classic cuts within her eponymous fashion line. This stylistic choice is particularly poignant given that a key argument in the reported family feud centred on Victoria allegedly cancelling her plans to design Nicola's wedding dress at the eleventh hour. While Nicola would not be seen in one of her mother-in-law's designs now, she was previously a proud model for Victoria's clothes. The designer once even gushed to Vogue about Nicola loving to raid her personal closet.
A Taste for the Finer Things: Wine and Gardens
The similarities delve into personal tastes as well. A snap from the Malibu break shows Brooklyn indulging in a glass of red wine. His father, David, has been vocal for years about his penchant for pricey bottles of red, previously sharing his appreciation for Chateau Margaux. Brooklyn's latest carousel featured a look at an 'extremely rare and historic' 1831 Château d'Yquem, a bottle that could set one back an average of £16,687. On Tuesday, he had two dusty bottles of this almost impossible-to-find wine at his disposal during a romantic dinner with Nicola and their pet dog, Lamb.
Furthermore, the romantic retreat includes lavish gardens full of lavender, rosemary, and lemons. Brooklyn shared a snap of these pretty gardens, which could easily have been mistaken for the grounds of the Beckham family's Cotswolds home. David, born and bred in London, fell in love with horticulture after buying his 24-acre Cotswolds estate eight years ago, transforming it with hundreds of trees and an extensive kitchen garden. Additionally, the grounds of San Ysidro Ranch feature a fairy-light-adorned pergola, as snapped by Nicola. This structure is remarkably similar to the one in David and Victoria's Cotswolds garden, both drenched in flowers and foliage with ample entertaining space underneath.
Defiant Doubling Down on a New Chapter
Through these smitten snaps and mirrored moments, Brooklyn appears to be defiantly doubling down on his statement that he is choosing his wife over his parents. Yet, the uncanny visual echoes of his parents' own social media persona suggest a complex, perhaps unconscious, homage amidst the strife. The strategic Instagram posts, while proclaiming a desire for privacy, continue to publicly fuel the family narrative, leaving followers to decipher the subtle, and not-so-subtle, parallels between the two generations of the Beckham clan.
