The road to riches that Pringle of Scotland would like to take has already been well mapped out by Burberry. Case in point: The company's creative director, Clare Waight Keller, named David Hicks as the presiding spirit behind Spring/Summer 2007, a full 12 months after Christopher Bailey dedicated a show to the famed decorator. That said, these clothes worked in their own right. For one thing, Waight Keller was less interested in Hicks's trademark geometric prints (which have been seen on fashionable Burberry-clad backs all over town this show season) than in the elegant informality of the man himself at rest in the South of France. That translated as a mohair-linen mix jacket; a three-piece suit with casual, pleated trousers; and fine-cotton shirtings in Riviera-inspired stripes.
Pringle's heritage is fabric, and Waight Keller was clearly excited by a ticking stripe in 100 percent cashmere that had been developed for her by an old British mill. Plain to the eye, luxurious to the touch, it was a good example of the way this collection sought to freshen up the familiar. When Waight Keller cut the ticking into a blazer, she created the sort of must-have that we're used to seeing from that other Brit label.
