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BURBERRY Burberry is a British luxury fashion house headquartered in London, England.

APRIL 2021

New collection

Price: $20

MAGAZINE FASHION

Designer & Editor Nguyen Khac Huy Picture Internet

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homas Burberry (27 August 1835 – 4 April 1926) was an English gentlemen’s outfitter, and the founder of international chain Burberry, one of Britain’s largest branded clothing businesses. He is also known as the inventor of gabardine. Burberry’s involvement in the development of waterproof sportsman clothing was showing to be a great success as his business was expanding rapidly. According to the census of 1871, Burberry was employing over 70 people. By 1878, he founded a larger factory, which focused on wholesale manufacturing and ‘ready to wear’ clothing, which employed over 200 workers 1881.

19th century

Burberry was founded in 1856 when 21-year-old Thomas Burberry, a former draper’s apprentice, opened his own store in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. By 1870, the business had established itself by focusing on the development of outdoors attire. In 1879, Burberry introduced in his brand the gabardine, a hardwearing, water-resistant yet breathable fabric, in which the yarn is waterproofed before weaving.In 1891, Burberry opened a shop in the Haymarket, London.

20th century

In 1901, the Burberry Equestrian night logo was developed containg the Latin word “Prorsum”, meaning “forwards”, and later registered it as a trademark in 1909.In 1911, the company became the outfitters for Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, and Ernest Shackleton, who led a 1914 expdtion to cross Antarctica. A Burberry gardine jacket was worn by George Mallory on his attempt on Mount Everest in 1924. Burberry was an independent family controlled

THOMAS BURBERRY (1835 - 1926)

company until 1955. Stars of the During the 1970s and 1980s, the growth of the brand in sales and profits through to the late 90s, although the full extent of sales was not apparent in the parent company accounts since much was done through licensed.

21th century

In May 2001, Christopher Bailey joined Burberry as creative director.

Christopher Bailey has been the chief creative officer since 2014, as well as CEO from 2014 – November 2017. Bailey stepped down as chief creative officer in March 2018 and departed the brand completely by the end of 2018. Between 2001 and 2005, Burberry became associated with “chav” and football hooligan culture. This change in the brand reputation was attributed to lower priced products, the proliferation of counterfeit goods adopting Burberry’s trademark check pattern, and adoption by celebrities prominently identified with “chav” culture. Burberry check garments being banned at some venues.

GUS divested its remaining interest Burberry in December 2005.

“In February 2019 Burberry apologized for showcasing a hoodie that featured a noose around the neck during its show at London Fashion Week. The retailer said it has removed the item from its collection, after criticism from one of its own models led to an online backlash. In February 2020 Burberry was forced to close 24 of its 64 Chinese mainland stores because of COVID-19”.

NGUYEN KHAC HUY EDITOR Burberry collection | 02

DIGITAL FASHION SHOW FOR SPRING 2021

Monochrome, grays and khakis were Tisci’s through line for most of the show, with many variations of tonal tailoring ranging from modern businessperson suiting to short, leggy skirt suits with dippy hems in back.

It helped that he’d dropped the distinction between the bourgeois and the edgy youth looks which had divided previous showings. This looked closer to elevation and consideration of design values across generations a wise move when persuading customers to invest in a luxury fashion brand.

Photo: Marcus Tondo

Burberry has outlined its digital fashion show plans for its coed spring 2021 collection: a digital-facing event to take place on September 17, 2020. Unlike other solely physical or solely digital shows planned for the spring 2021 season, Burberry’s event seems to be a merging of the real and the virtual, with a release promising a “live physical presentation that is open for all to experience digitally.” Translation: Burberry is likely pursuing a hybrid show that takes place in the real world with elements streamed online to a global audience of viewers.

Burberry’s fusion of a physical and digital event is the rare “phygital” show on the fashion schedule so far.

While Ermenegildo Zegna has promised a hybrid IRL digital event in Milan on July 17, many fashion brands are choosing an either or approach, investing in a three-dimensional event that will be transmitted online through traditional methods (like Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, which will participate in Milan’s digital Fashion Week this July) or a fully virtual experience that does not mimic the expansiveness of a physical event.

A release describes the event as being situated in nature around Britain an homage to the house’s outdoorsy heritage courtesy of founder Thomas Burberry. “As humans, we have always had a deep affinity to nature. We have had to respect and rely upon its power for our very existence, whilst marveling and reveling in its extraordinary beauty. Especially recently, we have all yearned to reconnect again and for this show, I wanted to celebrate these feelings by bringing our community together in a creative experience that takes place within the beautiful, natural landscape of Britain,” writes chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci in a release. As with all of Tisci’s Burberry runway events, the statement explains, this one will be carbon-neutral (though it’s important to note that the metric is the subject of debate).

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Photo: Armando Grillo

Here is a counterintuitive thought: Burberry becomes better when Riccardo Tisci lets himself put more of his own Italian self into it. His knowledge of the craft of cutting and draping, acquired in Paris at Givenchy, his European instinct for sophisticated sexiness and his affinity for modern fabrics are some of his natural strengths. That, and his proven track record in bringing diversity to the runway and garnering the following of a youth audience. Notwithstanding the corporate responsibility of somehow finding ways to represent the Britishness of Burberry to the world.

Specifically, he said, “Tailoring has started to do super well, especially for women; the chiffon blouses, sport things and the eveningwear which was not developed before.” Zoom to the suits inside-out sartorial fits, with the white bindings showing, and to the run of developments in gray jersey, used in tailoring (women’s and men’s), coats and slinky but classy dresses. Allora this is very much Italian way of designing, with an innate awareness of how to dress smartly in a warm climate, utilizing the subtle structure of modern fabrics. I like clothes very precise, but even I am starting to relax.

After three seasons, he says, the market has started to respond. “You know, it’s a big job. When I arrived, I wanted to go slowly. Now I start to feel more comfortable in my place, to understand a different London,” he said after the show. “The trench and the check are going to be forever-icons of the house, but society changed, the world is changing and now people want to wear different things and it doesn’t matter which country it comes from. So the globalization of style is a different approach today.”

Monochrome, grays and khakis were Tisci’s through line for most of the show, with many variations of tonal tailoring ranging from modern businessperson suiting to short, leggy skirt suits with dippy hems in back. It helped that he’d dropped the distinction between the bourgeois and the edgy youth looks which had divided previous showings. This looked closer to elevation and consideration of design values across generations a wise move when persuading customers to invest in a luxury fashion brand.

Burberry collection | 09

From side view, the face-concealing peaks triggered audience members to draw comparisons to Handmaid’s Tale headgear. It was purely accidental. Asked about it, Tisci drew a blank. He’s not watched the series. As far as he’s concerned, it’s just a fun part of his mission to make Burberry again.

“The chief creative officer and CEO is pretty obsessive when it comes to his research, and he called on the help of Moore’s daughter to help him bring more unexpected creative references into the collection”.

For young guys, to be sure, there were heartland Tisci isms in the oversized rugby shirts, but the one pair of the baggy shorts that have been his signature since Givenchy days came covered in white lace and with a lace panel fluttering from the back of the matching T-shirt. Along with Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior, Tisci is moving the Burberry culture towards a new kind of decorative masculinity.

Genuine voices and authentic skills are what make designers stand out today and in a competitive climate, the powers of true fashion leaders, rather than mere brand operatives, are at a premium. Where Tisci says he connects with Burberry’s heritage is in the Victorian roots of its founder. Gothic Victorianism was an obsession of the young Italian from the outset of his career. We saw it surface amongst the white lace dresses he showed among the pretty, feathered and besparkled eveningwear: an appealing reclaiming of his own background in haute couture. And there was an accessory certain to get people talking: a merge of baseball cap and Victorian bonnet.

Photo: Alessandro Lucion Burberry collection | 10

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s far as humor goes, it doesn’t get much darker than a love story between a mermaid and a shark. It was Riccardo Tisci’s loaded reference for his f irst Burberry collection post - lockdown.

Tisci spent his lockdown gardening and cooking with his 92-year-old mother in their family home near Lake Como. “It’s the first time in 21 years that we spent three months together. It was amazing,” he said on a video call on the morning of the show. Dressed in a lumberjack shirt, he was headed to an undisclosed forest outside of London. There, under the canopy of nature, every feeling that had washed over the designer during lockdown was released in an ominous performance created by the artist Anne Imhof, while Eliza Douglas sang at the live-streamed event. Staged sans audience, the tactile performance that ensued could easily make you forget we were in the of a pandemic.

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Cameras captured models getting dressed inside claustrophobic boxes before they could escape and embrace the freedom of the forest. It all felt very liberating until groups of men in black suits and sunglasses popped up behind them. They followed the models to a clearing where white-clad performers engaged in a ritualistic dance macabre amidst billows of orange smoke that had young commenters on the streaming service Twitch, which hosted the show, rife with quips. “The Hunger Games,” “Battle Royale,” and “Men in Black” were recurring references, while one user pronounced “they’re about to summon a demon!” Men in Black” were recurring a references, while one user pronounced.

It explained the sea-centric illustrations that embellished the collection, executed as if by the hand of a child. If they counted for its benign “mermaid” sensibility backed up by peplum silhouettes, glistening dresses caped like shells, and trench coats spliced with other garments like something out of Ariel’s grotto the threat of the “shark” was fast closing in.

“Even though I was happy to be with my mum, lockdown was a scary moment of loneliness,” Tisci explained. He expressed those feelings in creations that forewarned trouble at sea: stark rubber coats, I Know What You Did Last Summer sou’westers and overalls, and tops trapped in ornate fishnets.

That of course is reading into it.

This was a collection emotionally defined by the show that framed it. Behind the smoke and mirrors, it was Tisci’s most honest collection for Burberry to date (and one he called his “strongest”), and a more natural meeting between the “classic” and “street” elements he has previously

been splitting into categories. It was also his most painterly proposal for the house so far. “Blue is the new beige,” he teased, name-checking Burberry’s signature color.

Being scared made me realize how lucky I am to do this job,” Tisci said. “I want to be more creative. I want to give the best of myself. In the beginning, you want to get to a level you want to get to. When you get there, you’re working towards stabilization. But this was a wakeup call: let’s do our best. Logos come and go and come back again, and as the world enters a COVID-19 recession there’s reason to think they’ll go once more. Still, that belt looks genuinely new. That’s not an easy trick to pull off. Elsewhere, Tisci elaborated on the oversized check motif and scarf prints that have been central to his work for the label so far.

Yet that’s a lot of people to try to appeal to, all at the same time. Perhaps it’s easiest to start with the men.

Anyone with an idea of how Tisci himself likes to dress will immediately see his personal stamp all over the T-shirt and baggy shorts looks, including one in a dark navy plaid pattern fleece. Young menswear, famously, is a growing category, and one that Burberry aims to own with such rethinks of matching “suits” as the duffle coat, sweatshirt, and shorts, all made in gray jersey knit.

Photo: Courtesy of Burberry

WOMEN COLLECTION Burberry made London Fashion Week an essential part of the fashion calendar. Bailey exited the house in early 2021 to spend more time with his husband and two young children. Riccardo Tisci, who gave street wear runway legitimacy and designed red carpet-ready couture at Givenchy, was named Creative Director.

The main points of the Burberry women’s and men’s pre-fall are as difficult to encompass as is Riccardo Tisci’s task of covering the fashion consciousness of the globe. Perhaps that’s why he thought to include the motif of an old navigational map, which is printed on silk head squares and variously pleated, draped, and patchworked. It’s a collection that isn’t anchored in any one idea; it travels between disparate tropes, representing the biggest British fashion brand to all generations, for all times and occasions.

Not that you can’t see who’s captain. Tisci’s eye for the elegant and sexy, his far-from-earthy, English-classic countrywear, his aspirational streetwear, and a Kim Kardashian West moment are all logged in this journey around Burberry world. (KKW already wore the beige jeans with a boned corset top in look 14.

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Tisci always promised to expand eveningwear when he came to Burberry he brought knowledge of the territory with him. Burberry evening suits are now a uniform go-to for men on red carpets, while the women’s nighttime is a fully calibrated repertoire ranging from a drop-dead backless goddess silver streak with a snaky train to a bubblegum pink plissé knee-length dress with slashed medieval sleeves, through to ingenuous black tailoring. Women looking for trouser alternatives for the awards season will doubtless leap on the standout opportunities of the graphic cutaway cape coat with a gold chain belt, and the sophisticated yet cool layering of a silk-fringed coat tabard and narrow trousers.

BY SARAH MOWER January 14, 2021

Branding for Burberry? Logos are threaded through, for those who care to carry the obvious house identifiers.

The recognizable, rounded, retro TB designed by Peter Saville comes as a gilt buckle on handbags, printed on a vibrant padded gilet with a matching checked coat, and appears all over the place in linings, is exploded in giant type on nylon parka sleeves.

The Burberry check is less in evidence this season, but Tisci’s translations of country fare very much are. With fashion in the mood for tweediness, his orange-lined checked poncho with a tunic trouser suit underneath looks highly viable for women who’d never go on a shooting weekend, but also for members of international country house society. Otherwise, Tisci’s sweeping view of demographics brings a Euro spin to what he does with quilting turning a trad-boxy template glam on a jacket with a torso-clinching knitted insert and pairing it with a pencil skirt.

Girl’s tradition is well served by a beige car coat that comes with a chocolate brown puffer lining, worn over a blue-and-white striped banker shirt with TB woven into it. There is something very Italian about that the kind of Italian-ness that British men envy and are happy to buy for themselves.

For women too there’s a small section of Econyl outerwear, the branded synthetic fiber, which is regenerated from waste such as fishing nets, carpet, and fabric scraps. It’s one Burberry contribution to the new circular economy. At a moment when the climate crisis is at the top of everyone’s minds, resetting luxury to align with fossil-fuel-saving resources like this can’t happen fast enough.

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BURBERRY SPRING 2021 READYTO WEAR Tisci said. “I want to be more creative. I want to give the best of myself. In the beginning, you want to get to a level you want to get to. When you get there, you’re working towards stabilization.

But this was a wake-up call: Let’s do our best.”

B

urberry held its show in the vaulted Victorian ironwork hall at Olympia, a London venue that must have been constructed around the time that Thomas Burberry began his company. As a huge publicly traded corporation operating globally, it is now stepping up efforts to do better with its carbon footprint, stating not only that the show venue was “certified sustainable” but also that the company is investing in “carbon offsetting” initiatives with regenerative agriculture and agroforestry in Australia via Pur Projet (whose work can be read up on the charity’s website.)

The idea that today a fashion company is thinking about taking responsibility for something happening on the other side of the world perhaps isn’t so strange we all live on the same plane.

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There was certainly something calmer about the presentation, compared to Tisci’s more frenetic efforts to cover every age and class segment at his debut. “I think it was much more together this time,” he said. It’s a leap to connect a British lifestyle brand designed by an Italian amid Brexit politics, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised that his government will bring people together and look outward to opportunities on continents beyond Europe as it stands alone on the world stage. India, for example, is a major target for new trade.

If Burberry is contributing to modernizing the world’s impression of Britishness, the staid image of an English gent in a trench coat and a rolled umbrella with a headscarf-wearing lady from the shires is thankfully long gone. What Tisci serves is sophisticated tailoring (this season sometimes inset with zones of ribbed knit) and innovation in the form of cuts and details like looped collars on trenches and double-layered coats. There was a woman’s trench with a trailing chiffon sash instead of a regular belt and outerwear softened by caped shapes; and for a man a generous oversized inside-out duffle coat. The Indian influence was felt when Tisci sent out a group of pleated madras checks, making a comparison

of a kind with the Burberry plaid. A section of layered and hip-knotted shirts led into the “street” section of the collection for men. Even here, the impression was much less bombastic and branded than it was a couple of years back, as Tisci deconstructed rugby shirts, making one into a knit poncho.

Model: Hannah Motle Burberry collection | 18

The Indian influence was felt when Tisci sent out a group of pleated madras checks, making a comparison of a kind with the Burberry plaid. A section of layered and hipknotted shirts led into the “street” section of the collection for men.

Burberry held its show in the vaulted Victorian ironwork hall at Olympia, a London venue that must have been constructed around the time that Thomas Burberry began his company. As a huge publicly traded corporation operating globally, it is now stepping up efforts to do better with its carbon footprint, stating not only that the show venue was “certified sustainable” but also that the company is investing in “carbon offsetting” initiatives with regenerative agriculture and agroforestry in Australia via Pur Projet (whose work can be read up on the charity’s website.)

The idea that today a fashion company is thinking about taking responsibility for something happening on the other side of the world perhaps isn’t so strange—we all live on the same planet. Riccardo Tisci also shared his ideas about global influences in his collection, talking about how he’d lived in India and learned meditation in a phase of his life after studying in multicultural London at Central Saint Martins and before he started his own label in Italy. There was certainly something calmer about the presentation, compared to Tisci’s more frenetic efforts to cover every age and class segment at his debut. “I think it was much more together this time,” he said. It’s a leap to connect a British lifestyle brand designed by an Italian amid Brexit politics, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised that his government will bring people together and look outward to opportunities on continents beyond Europe as it stands alone on the world stage. India, for example, is a major target for new trade.

“I had never been to a fashion show before going to the Burberry show last month.

It was an extraordinary spectacle. I was incredibly green and had no idea what an undertaking it is. I also have a new respect for models because they are so close to the front row and must be so self-conscious”.

Eddie Redmayne