Last season it was midsummer festivals and the British countryside. So this season Daniel Lee pivoted Burberry towards midwinter nightlife and the British capital. The brand that’s partially defined by the grid of its Nova check is sketching a graphically direct new pattern of presentation in its shows.
Tonight’s latest was as slick as the latex ‘puddles’ on the runway. At its finale the lights on a scaffolded facsimile of Tower Bridge pulsed much more spectacularly than the real lights on the real bridge just opposite Burberry’s Old Billingsgate venue ever do. Backstage afterwards, Daniel Lee thought back to his days as a student here, saying: “When I first moved to London I lived in Whitechapel. I would often feel quite homesick, so when I did I would walk down the river to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London and that would make me feel better. Because I was excited just to be here.”
Lee said the season’s mission had been to create a very Burberry day-to-night wardrobe, that could take you wherever the night might: “it could be a film premiere, or a charity gala; it might be a nightclub. You know, London offers such a breadth of life at night, and that was really what we wanted to celebrate.” The other point of celebration was the brand’s 170th anniversary, but this was not laid on too thick.
Alongside the Nova check, Burberry is best known for its trench coat. Lee delivered a trench for many occasions and customers. There were feminine trenches in ivory, midnight blue and teal whose gun flaps were detonated into ruffles. There were check trenches, leather trenches, a cool tucked-in cropped shawl-collar trench, crumpled silk trenches, patchwork shaggy shearling trenches (great in oxblood), a pristinely formal white wool trench, and a glamorous dark shearling fur trench hemmed in raindrop beading. There was a cropped quilted black leather trench and a dark trench, seemingly also in leather, whose surface had been scored to reproduce a facsimile of a map of the very same patch of London we were watching this show in, and which Lee had found in the Burberry archives. This map trench, said Lee, was his personal favourite. Nearly all of them tended to a slightly oversized cut with ’80s-style epaulettes that dropped down the shoulder.
To resonate globally, Burberry is always going to present a sanitised, polished vision of the Britishness it riffs on. But this collection also creditably hinted—albeit quite politely—at the authentically flirty and dirty nature of London by night. A hip flask peeked from the back pocket of a gent wearing black wool trousers, a black shearling bomber, a purple knit and night-time sunglasses. A womenswear look that combined sparkly roll neck sweater, pantyhose, and a padded leather jacket falling from the shoulder was entirely imaginable falling out of a pub at closing time. An amazing map-embroidered parka and matching pants looked like a solution for jumping to the front of a club queue. A handsome peaked collar gray mohair overcoat covering a double-zipped leather hoodie padded by a blue check scarf (plus sunglasses) seemed an ideal ensemble for some wild nocturnal cross-town mission. Another version of the ruffle collared trench, cut this time in checked shiny black over a black leather pant, suddenly appeared more powerful than pretty.
That look’s confidence reflected Burberry’s broader direction of late. Lee is finding a point then getting straight to it, diverting only to showcase the breadth of design expression he continues to mine from within the brand’s core codes.
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