84 DECEMBER 2017
Phoebe Philo, of reviving, Marco Gobbetti stoked talk of an
energy shift at Burberry. Whatever dialogues went on
behind the scenes, the results were in the open come
September. Where Burberry has always riffed on its
heritage, offering reworks of its icons – the trench, the
1924-launched camel, red-and-black check – this time any
airy thematic thread was gutted from the collection. The
thinking was once that a heritage brand should not lean
too heavily on its history, or else risk staid repetition.
Burberry instead was looking its history directly in the
face, making Britishness itself the muse. It is a sound
tethering point when designers, facing increasing demands,
or indeed working high-paced jobs as Bailey has for near
two decades, are jumping between houses as part of the
revolving door at top luxury labels. It is also a model that,
despite its challenges, leaves the door open to change and
broad influences, preventing dreaded brand stasis.
An exhibition of British social photography that guests
could view pre- and post-show in
the show space emphasised this
fact. Co-curated by Bailey, English
photographer and current fashion
favourite Alasdair McLellan and
owner of bookstore Claire de
Rouen, Lucy Kumara Moore, it
featured works by photographers
including Dafydd Jones, Shirley
Baker, Ken Russell and Martin
Parr, documenting the grand and
the quotidian of British life. A
worse-for-wear ball guest asleep
in his tuxedo, the gentry tending
to their horses, army recruits in
polished uniforms, tender
moments between a Ted couple,
the English tradition of
picnics, the love afforded their
verdant gardens and the foibles
of battling ‘meteorological
conundrums’, as Burberry once
put it, of the country. “The more
we thought about it, the more it
made sense to not just reflect one
part of England. We wanted to
make it a real vision of the UK,”
McLellan said of the process.
That Brexit has dragged the British identity out from its
comfortable resting place and forced Britons to ask ‘who are
we?’ and ‘who do we want to be?’ makes Bailey’s take on the
label’s future compelling. The exhibition, pointedly named
Here We Are, and the runway were Burberry’s answers. Men’s
and women’s collections shown together, glittering brooches
and tailoring on both genders and the trench as something
that has always transcended “age, sex, race, sexuality, social
standing, culture and seasons”. Models too were consciously
cast from diverse backgrounds, all barefaced with hair →
From top: the show and exhibition space in Old Sessions House,
Clerkenwell, where the collection and Here We Are exhibition
were held; Kaia Gerber backstage at Burberry; Burberry
September 2017 collection; a detail from the collection.VOGUE VIEWPOINT