Daniel Lee has embraced Burberry’s logo-less Nova check logo with a pair of sneakers that break convention in an alternative thicket green colourway
Although synonymous with subcultural football terrace fashions of the 1980s, the notion of shifting the Burberry Check from discreet trench-coat lining to just about every product known to mankind – including these suitably soccer-coded trainers – actually originated in the 1960s. Back then, in Paris, a fashion show was staged for the British ambassador, Sir Patrick Reilly: a buyer at Burberry’s Paris store wanted to gussy up the offering, so ripped out a lining from a trench and wrapped it around luggage, as well as fashioning it into the fittingly English gesture of an umbrella cover. The idea caught on, in a moment obsessed with conspicuous consumption and the branded baggage required for a new era of jet-set travel, and the Burberry Check was unleashed across a litany of goods. An unconventional logo-less logo, overt and covert in equal measure, it continues to resonate to the present day. Daniel Lee has embraced the design, and the idea, though his Discover sneakers break with convention in proposing not the red, white and beige of the classic Burbs Nova check, but an alternate thicket green colourway. In itself, that’s a deep cut to the 1920s, when Burberry proposed a plethora of different tartans as trench linings, until the signature Burberry won out as the people’s favourite, both inside, and out.
The Burberry Discover trainers are available to buy now.
