BURBERRY BACK ON THE FASHION MAP

British Fashion in general, and Burberry, in particular, should be proud of the brand last collection’s outcome, one of most awaited runway shows of the season, together with Sliman’s debut at Céline. Burberry’s collection was ravishing, chic, street conscious and yet tailoring oriented, and it basically put Burberry back into the fashion map.

It is not by chance, however, that the re-birth of the quite-traditional Burberry happened because of an Italian designer. It looks like a paradox yet it is not.
This, of course, is not to say that British designers aren’t amazing -on the contrary- and we should also remember that Riccardo Tisci himself has a Central Saint Martin’s education; but British talents usually stand out when it comes to creating extravaganza, unusual shapes and a sort of fashion that compulsively chases art. Richard Quinn is a good recent example of a great designer of this sort. Very few are the British designers who use the traditional code of dress and that make commercially valuable collections. Not when they work for British based brands at least

The point I am trying to make here is that this penchant for thinking-outside-of-the-box so admirable and common amongst the Brits, sometimes makes people underestimate how important that box is, even in order to challenge it. What Burberry needed was to reinforce its roots by using the style grammar of luxury in the present time. It needed some sophistication and some chic. The brand’s clients, after all, are ladies who go to work and wear a trench coat, a knee length skirt, and a blouse, even a pair of jeans but everything in an understated way. Within Riccardo Tisci’s show, all the above was spot-on.

He was smart enough to provide his Burberry with two specific directions: Luxury on the one hand; dressing all ages on the other, and that is, of course, is pivotal in a fashion world ruled by Millennials.

His British education, Italian taste and the superb experience he had at Givenchy have definitely made him the perfect man to approach a brand that needs to respect its English origins if it wants to be seen as a trendsetter in fashion, and ultimately needs to sell, sell, sell, because a fashion brand of that echelon is, above all, business.