Burberry: Hindered by Heritage?
Let me start by saying this article is based not on Burberry’s sales numbers but on my personal reception of the brand.
Daniel Lee has been with the brand for three years now, and I think that is a fair amount of time for a designer to properly acclimate and assimilate into both the brand and the company, to grasp the essential ‘Burberry-ness,’ and Daniel Lee has evidently shown promising growth and maturity at Burberry. The latest Burberry FW25 collection relied less on the brand’s overt tartan signature and more on Lee’s own style. He focused on the classiness that perhaps Burberry has been desperate to find a stylistic way to show the world. Here, I need to note that I am not hinting that Burberry’s brand signature is unappealing, but rather I want to bring up their failure to convince the market that this brand, the ‘Face of British Fashion,’ the ‘Burberry-ness’ as I lazily coined, is interesting and is worth incorporating into people’s wardrobes. When it comes to conversations, or the so-called ‘golden era’ of Burberry in recent history, Christopher Bailey is always the designer many refer back to, hoping he will return one day. Although I don’t necessarily see how Bailey’s Burberry is significantly better, I can understand that perspective, and yet, Daniel Lee’s Burberry gives me a good amount of confidence, and I don’t hold that over his current run. Compared to his debut collection at Burberry, which heavily relied on the Checks, FW25 seems to be a big step away from the obvious, and I absolutely loved it.
Now, I have to preface, the problem I want to point out is very vague, perhaps you might not class it as one, or perhaps what I am trying to get at is not quite the crux of the possibly existing problem, but here are my thoughts. Within my fashion microcosm, the little bubble built upon my perception of the industry, my knowledge, and news intake, Burberry has completely lost international style relevance. With this, I am not suggesting people have stopped wearing anything Burberry or that wearing Burberry is immediately deemed as ‘unfashionable,’ but I fail to remember Burberry’s relevance outside of its iconic pattern. Is the apparel so repulsive that anyone considering buying Burberry is limited to scarves or trench coats? Is this why Daniel Lee is restricting himself from the Burberry check? Was this why Ricardo Tisci designed the rebellious SS22 collection? There seems to be an underlying desire to stop blindly holding onto and signalling brand heritage from current and past creative directors, and gradually wishing to unshackle themselves from something that seemed… uninspiring.
Undoubtedly, Burberry has long been the face of English fashion, perhaps Savile Row comes close, but traditionally and in terms of international fame, Burberry takes the helm. When a brand becomes attached to its origin, the world’s perception of the place of origin becomes a massive factor, and the British heritage is a tricky one, solely because it’s a big cauldron of good and bad, but the full picture remains relatively unknown to the outside world. Ask anyone who may be unfamiliar with Britain to describe the ‘English style,’ perhaps they will blurt out a few brand names, perhaps Vivienne Westwood and Burberry, maybe Docs will be included, but they certainly will describe the sense of affluence, the English suits, the private school uniforms, and a style that closely resembles the Sloanes. Myself, as someone that moved to Manchester just under 3 years ago and has barely begun to understand what ‘Britishness’ is, I can already tell you that most people who have not had the chance to gain real insight into England’s culture, have a good stereotypical idea of what ‘rich London’ look like, which is honestly the worst misrepresentation of Englishness, and definitely not the whole picture.
Burberry used to be synonymous with affluence, it is historically associated with cutting-edge practicality but slowly gained luxurious status, especially with their Royal Warrant in 1955. And then, through the past 50 years, Burberry was reduced to their Checks, seen mainly on the streets in forms of accessories and trench coats, which have trickled down to thrift stores, sometimes holding racks and racks of them, and culturally, loosely associated with chavs and hooligans. Not the best outcome at all. The side of British rudeness may not be internationally known. However, even then, their most popular items remained the same; people still gravitated towards the Checks and Checks only, and eventually, the fashion press started giving Burberry the cold shoulder. Vice versa, Burberry seemed to fail at giving the industry a reason to be hype about it outside of gimmicky campaigns that don’t flow the best into each other.
The two prominent intentions behind purchases at Burberry, once again, from a very limited but not selective personal point of view, are either conspicuous or simple practicality, it’s, as I said, hard to break this image that the brand has cultivated and even more challenging to incentivize their customers to branch out. Moreover, when the brand had suffered through years of overlooked design that failed to help it bust through their heritage ceiling, the image of the Burberry Checks, no matter how colorful, the feeling of ‘only going to Burberry for the essentials’, desperation, and hopelessness seemed to have consolidated even more. It feels like they are being held hostage by their stubbornness to be the face of British fashion (which, in a way, is greatly dependent on the world’s outdated and ignorant perception) and also the seemingly unmalleable and uninspiring approach to its heritage.
I really wish the name Burberry would ring as loudly as Dior and Prada, as I do not think the level of craftsmanship and attractiveness is that divided. Burberry has the potential, under the right creative director, of course. I wholeheartedly suggest that Burberry be a little less intense about being a Brit, take away the overhammering of its Englishness, stop with the constant connection of Burberry and tartan, and start letting these notions fall to the foundational level and build something substantial and new upon that.