At a time like this, we all need some kind of protection – whether from political situations, economic woes or, perhaps, just from the weather. Although, with climate change, that may be the biggest concern of all. In any case, Daniel Lee’s urge to wrap up in his Autumn/Winter 2024 Burberry show feels bang on the money.
“I wanted this collection to feel warm and protective,” Lee said. And that’s also bang on brand. Burberry’s roots are in protection –unglamorous though it sounds. It actually is quite unglamorous – Burberry’s water-resistant cotton gabardine, invented in the 19th century, was inspired by the clothes worn by shepherds huddling on the sodden fields of England.
Those were smocks, made of linen coated with lanolin to repel the driving rain. A sheep oil-smeared smock is hardly a big fashion statement for 2024, but Lee instead translated that ideology into a collection of hardy outerwear and wrapped layers, elongated silhouettes and tightly tailored trench coats that managed to simultaneously reference Burberry’s past in clothes that spoke of the now.
Burberry’s past is, of course, a selling point. Burberry stands for establishment, tradition, royal warrants (which they’ve started printing on their packaging again under Lee) and an inherent Britishness that managed to simultaneously hold its authenticity at home while also being readily exported. Weirdly, that’s something Thomas Burberry – the label’s founder – cannily figured a century or so ago, when he first started selling Burbs-branded Britishness across the world. Burberry’s business today is truly global – there are over 400 stores across six continents, and Burberry outfitted polar explorers, so I guess we could even say they’re in seven. And Britishness is still a selling point.
So, in this show, well-known British faces peppered the cast – Agyness Deyn, Lily Cole, Karen Elson, Naomi Campbell – and Amy Winehouse provided the soundtrack. And the clothes themselves managed to tread a line of evoking British archetypes without descending into picture postcard pastiche. The trench opened and closed the show – the last look cross-breeding it with a perfecto jacket with epaulettes and mouth-guard outlined with nailhead studs, a punk whiff that was riffed on with zip-scarred trousers and touches of shredded tartan. Fabrics came from Ireland and Scotland – Donegal tweeds, Lochcarron tartan.
“I wanted to take a traditional approach to the fabrics and how each piece is made,” Lee said – so traditional kilts were elongated to floor-skimming skirts, clipped in brass, and the cashmere Burberry scarf, executed here in nubby frayed tweed, was tugged up (and down) to become a tube dress bookended with fringe. The originals were also knotted around the head of (mostly male) models, in a nod to the favoured headgear of various royal highnesses (and, indeed, Majesties). And although Winehouse crooned Back to Black, the colours here were rather, warm, darkened shades – blueberry, peat-brown, rich pillar-box red, slate and a sodden olive green. Oh, and the bags were great, massive hanging sacks of wool or leather big enough to drag your life around with you.
But this wasn’t a hollow marketing exercise – nor was it a collection embedded in narrative intent. It was about proposing clothes that chime with people’s lives, looks that could be broken apart into exceptional pieces to be really worn, lived in. Burberry originally dubbed itself an “outfitters” – and prided itself on being able to provided near enough everything and anything its customers may need, for every step of their life (and beyond – they even offered an undertaking service, at one point). It’s an ethos Lee mirrors – his form follows function. And there’s nothing more Burberry than that.
