RICCARDO

TISCI

Burberry, a brand as British as Buckingham Palace, is now led by the fearless Italian

designer. Can his street-inspired style and inclusive approach propel the $10.5 billion

company beyond gabardine—and help England understand itself along the way?

BY JO-ANN FURNISS PHOTOGRAPHY BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS

FASHION INNOVATOR

128

I

N EVERY HARD STORY, you find the romance,”

s a y s R i c c a r d o T i s c i. H e i s t a l k i n g a b o u t T h o m a s

Burberry, a self-made, tough Victorian who

established his clothing company, Burberry,

in 1856 at the age of 21. And yet, Tisci, 45, who

became Burberry’s chief creative officer last

year, could just as easily be talking about himself.

It is early evening in London in late July. The next

day, Boris Johnson will make his way to Buckingham

Palace to formally accept the office of prime minis-

ter from the Queen. The Houses of Parliament and

10 Downing Street are about a 10-minute walk from

the vast, labyrinthine complex of offices and studios

that make up the Burberry headquarters. In these

hushed honey-hued confines, the BoJo assumption

of high office has resonance. Today, the hundred-day

countdown to Brexit has begun, with all that entails

for globalized trade and national identity in the U.K.

Burberry is bound up in British class and culture

like no other fashion brand. Tisci is all too aware of

this: “I know! No pressure,” he says with a laugh.

It can be found in council estates and in country

houses, its connotations decidedly different in each,

yet it also transcends both. It occupies a place on

the world stage (428 stores and counting) and is a

force within pop culture (witness Beyoncé onstage

last year in head-to-toe Burberry check). It conquers

global territories that were once unimaginably

impregnable: China is one of its largest markets,

helping to account for the stock price’s record high

this summer.

Tisci, born in Cantù, Italy, understands he is deal-

ing with a British leviathan. “I’m an Italian, working

for the most important British house,” he says. “It is

my job to make Britishness known throughout the

world. Plus, there is the sensibility of including every-

body, of what that means for the time and the culture.”

Issues of identity have often been important to

Tisci, not just at Burberry but throughout his career

and in his own life. In many ways, they are the rea-

son he wanted to take the job: “It is part of [British]

culture. There is something strong, and not only

fashion. There’s a different meaning, a style, over a

name and a history.” It is why he wanted to return to

London, the place largely responsible for his fashion

education, in both the formal and informal sense:

“Britain is where I discovered how to be myself.

“I used to study here,” he says, seated on a bal-

cony overlooking the rooftops of Westminster. At 19,

he won a scholarship to earn his bachelor’s degree

in fashion at Central Saint Martins. “England had

given me so much; it had given me a chance. I wanted

to give something back. Burberry has such meaning

here. Like Adele buying a [Burberry bag] with the

first money she earned,” he says, referring to the

English singer’s 2006 purchase.

Tisci has always been an instinctively inclusive

designer. When he started as creative director of

Givenchy in 2005, long before inclusivity and diver-

sity became buzzwords in boardrooms, he seized on

such issues. He was lambasted for it at times. “What

we were doing was seen as weird and going nowhere.

Now look at the world—thank God it has changed.”

Certainly, Tisci pioneered much of what is

being pushed today at fashion houses and in the

wider culture. At LVMH-owned Givenchy, the

129

COMING UP ROSES

“You need to sell

dreams, and not just

to young people,” says

Riccardo Tisci. “You

need to sell clothes.

The most important

thing to understand

is the reality.” The

chief creative officer of

Burberry since 2018,

Tisci is photographed

on the roof of the com-

pany headquarters.