When Burberry announced the appointment of Daniel Lee as creative director last September, the rumor mill went into overdrive. This was the man who had transformed Bottega Veneta from an insider’s luxury brand to an outsider’s hype beacon. What would he do in the tallest, oldest building in the high castle of British fashion?
He’s still big on renovating, for one. Before any actual clothes had hit rails, Riccardo Tisci’s modernist sans serif Burberry was replaced by Lee’s more traditional, slightly village-y Burberry, with its neat edges and modest flicks. With it came the return of the 122-year-old “Equestrian Knight” logo: an armored cavalier jousting on horseback with the word “Prorsum”—Latin for “forward”—held aloft on a spearhead banner. The coinciding campaign was understated: Shygirl smized through rose-lacquered acrylics; John Glacier sauntered in front of Big Ben; Vanessa Redgrave was shot, mid-shriek, in Trafalgar Square (yes, in a trench). It said nothing and yet so much. This was cool, and eccentric, and diverse, and evasive—all adjectives worn with pride not just by British fashion, but British people.
Tonight, the palace intrigue was put to rest—for a few hours, anyway—at Lee’s first-ever Burberry show. The pews were full: Stormzy, Jason Statham, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jodie Comer and Naomi Campbell, among many others, were there. And despite the endless back-channelling of information that may or may not be true, fashion’s talking heads were still at a loss as to what to expect from the new Burberry. Few (if any) estimates were on the money.
Ki Price
Held in Kennington Park, Lee’s show added another demographic to the enclave just south of Westminster. Joining the usual residents—Londoners, politicians and reformed party boys—were the fashion crowd, who snaked in long queues behind barriers well past the 8pm on the show’s invite. Another surprise: this isn’t a fashion-y part of the capital. That’s perhaps the point.
The temporary venue was lit only by waifish spotlights, and cushioned by tartan picnic blankets. Upon those sat complimentary hot water bottles jacketed in the house check. There was a faint smell of campfire and bracken in the air. Accents of electric blue were flecked throughout the space, too: a suggestion that Burberry had found its house color—an important distinction to make among the Valentino pink, Tod’s orange, Dolce black and, yes, Bottega green.
Ki Price
Except, no! Burberry hadn’t settled on that at all. For out walked multiple colors at the show’s open, all dyed into the house check: Wimbledon purple, forest green, acid yellow, deep red. Darker colors, mostly. But still, colors that were unafraid to clash. Not much electric blue, anyway.
And the clothes themselves were a departure from the rough-around-the-edges elegance of Lee’s tenure at Bottega Veneta. It felt like clubwear—elevated clubwear, yes, with immaculate craftsmanship and flourishes of the weird—but clubwear nonetheless. The sense of humor wasn’t a giggle, either, but a deep-bellied, intellectual laugh. It was infectious. A bear trapper hat on steroids was architectural and fun at once. Another hat, knitted, had taken the shape of a mallard’s head—a recurring motif throughout alongside rabbits and roses. “The ducks I just found very British,” Lee told GQ as he addressed a group of writers post-show. “It made me think of a park, of the outdoors, and Burberry is an outdoors brand. It reminded me of rain, and protection. The brand’s about functionality.” So those hiking boots that looked high fashion and country-appropriate all at once? “Yeah, there has to be functionality.”
Ki Price
Britishness itself is a disparate notion made of many parts, and that resulted in a collection of many parts. In the mish-mash of checks, there was a punk quality, youthful in the sense that it didn’t take itself too seriously. This is fashion to fall asleep in on a farmer’s cornfield after the greatest rave ever at the crumbling estate of someone’s mad, late uncle. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Lee’s trench coat—the very bedrock of House Burberry—taking the form of a deconstructed, trapezoidal cocoon. Another, oversized, was long and built to billow dramatically on a cruel moor.
There were also bags. Many, many bags. And Lee himself is the bringer of It bags. At Burberry, a brand more famed for its outerwear and accessories, that presented not so much a challenge as it did an opportunity. “I like doing bags, I just do. It’s where it gets most complex,” said Lee. “I spent more time in Florence than I did in London designing. It’s exciting to find a narrative as this isn’t a brand that’s known for that.” The result, again, was a mix of materials (suede and leather) and sizes. And those water bottle party favors found life on the runway, as models clutched their own—an accessory we’ve yet to see in high fashion. If we can clutch thimble-sized Jacquemus Le Chiquito or Balenciaga laundry bags, why not Burberry hot water bottles?
That eccentricity remained at the very heart of Lee’s debut. This was a reflection of the Britain he knows, and seemingly loves: a patchwork country of contrasts and peculiarity and personality. “For me, it’s celebrating what’s great about Britain. Look at Vivienne [Westwood], and all the many examples of amazing people from this city,” he says. “You can walk down the street and you’re surrounded by all different lives living together. That’s something I’ve missed. I want it to be positive and show some positivity about Britain’s place in the world.”
This story originally ran on British GQ with the title “In the trenches at Daniel Lee’s Burberry debut”
