82 DECEMBER 2017
Burberry’s all-inclusive vision for its September
2017 collection beams out a message of optimism
as it prepares for a new chapter. By Alice Birrell.Identity check
Backstage at Burberry’s September 2017 collection in London.vening time slots during fashion week are the
industry’s equivalent of the headline music act
taking to the stage. Reserved for top-billing names,
the operation is sleek: the luxury cars line up and deposit
their VIP occupants, the street-style photographers capture
the well-shod attendees, the lights go up and the collection
is paraded down a glossy runway complete with its own
guardians to prevent a dreaded stray shoe from marking it
before the models have their moment.
On the evening of the Burberry show in Clerkenwell at
London fashion week, things aren’t rolling in this usually
grand direction. There’s no row of black cars or street-style
photographers as showgoers stagger their entrance past
a crowd of protestors from an animal welfare group. Inside
Old Sessions House, a former courthouse, editors, VIPs and
a celebrity-front-row contingent that includes Kate Moss,
Naomi Campbell and Cara Delevingne shuffle onto
a hodgepodge of garden benches, old-school seats, and
carved wooden dining chairs. Paint peels from the walls
under a vast central coffered dome as the fashion show kicks
off. Welcome to a luxury brand in 2017. Some of it is
unplanned, some of it is planned to look unplanned, and the
effect is a mash-up of disparate elements and the message:
Burberry is striking out of its polished comfort zone.
Nearly eight weeks later, there are more surprises. The
news is announced, as this issue is going to press, that
chief creative officer Christopher Bailey is leaving the
label, his last collection to be presented in February and he
will step down from the board in March 2018. What to
make, then, of this collection that has done away with the
crisp trenches, clear-eyed views of English garden floral
prints, ultra-refined tea dresses that Bailey has installed in
his 17 years as creative head?
Windbreakers and Harrington jackets on boys and girls
were worn with baseball caps. Picnic-blanket tartan
ponchos and oversized outerwear appeared as boxier
versions of the iconic trench. Then appeared markers of
British aristocracy, though these were all done with more
humour than usual; grandma’s chandelier earrings and
brooches, with the too-big look that comes when you snuck
into her jewellery box (pleasingly for all, and for the
protestors outside, the fur coats were all faux). Mouliné
grandpa cardigans and Fair Isle knits with extra-long
sleeves, and hand-crocheted vests took us to the icier
elements of the northernmost British Isles. “It is a little bit
of an eclectic mix of everything that I love about Britishness.
It’s the highs, the lows, opulence, the working class, the
different sides of ceremonies, and pomp and traditions and
fashion and clothes through the ages,” surmised
Christopher Bailey of the show.
A new CEO was installed at the label in July this year.
Coming from Céline, a house he is credited, along withE
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