Burberry chief creative officer and president Christopher Bailey recently added curator to his impressive list of credentials. After last season’s Henry Moore show, he’s taken on an even bigger art project this season called Here We Are, a retrospective of 20th-century British photography. Images shot by social documentarians such as society photographer Dafydd Jones and Magnum lensman Chris Steele-Perkins, who spent much of his career capturing life in the U.K.’s poorest urban areas, lined the walls of the Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell tonight. As Britain hurtles headlong towards Brexit—some might say unwittingly—national identity has become a subject of major debate, and it seemed as if Bailey was bringing the full spectrum of the country’s diverse population, which has historically been drawn along socio-economic lines, into the frame.
The collection itself was a portrait of British style that encompassed the lofty eccentricity of the aristocracy and the grit of the street. “A little more honest, a little less polished,” was how Bailey summed it up backstage. That high-low, new world meets old world mix made for a pretty intoxicating brew, and though many of the key touchstones were familiar—Fair Isle sweaters, argyle socks, and penny loafers, to name a few—the clothes born out of his culture clash had a modern tension about them that was entirely fresh and new. Burberry’s royal connections are well-documented—it is one of the few companies to have been granted a warrant by the royal family, after all—and, lest we forget, Fall 2016 was an all-out homage to the iconic style of Queen Elizabeth I. For his latest collection, however, Bailey referenced Burberry style influencers of the more recent past, and the plaid baseball caps, hooded anoraks, and techy track pants spoke to the everyday wardrobe of the working class hero.
The word “chav” might still have derogative connotations, but these days, that distinctive, flashy swagger has global resonance—just ask Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy. His recent menswear collaboration with the brand flipped the déclassé undertones of the look upside down, most notably the signature Burberry check, the brand’s equivalent of a logo. Bailey invited Rubchinskiy to shoot images of the new collection as part of the exhibition, and it seems that his ongoing cultural exchange is bearing plenty of fruit. Bailey has a longstanding tradition of building bridges with creative minds outside of his world—be they musicians or world-renowned artists—and he continues to prove just how vital those conversations can be to pushing a global brand like Burberry forward. With their seamless high-tech construction and traditional plaid finishes, the brand’s highly coveted rain macs certainly combine the best high-performance know-how of the future with the picture-perfect dimensions of the past in a cool, streetwise way.
