The trench coat on the mannequin at Burberry's Regent Street flagship has no belt

The trench coat on the mannequin at Burberry's Regent Street flagship has no belt. The sleeves are cut wider than regulation, the storm flap removed. What remains is a shell in honey gabardine, recognisable and stripped. This is the work of Daniel Lee, who arrived at Burberry in October 2022 and has spent the past two years asking a single question: what happens when you take away everything the customer expects?

The answer, so far, is complicated.

Thomas Burberry et l'invention du gabardine

Burberry was founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry, a draper's apprentice who opened a shop in Basingstoke at twenty-one. His contribution was not aesthetic but technical. In 1879, he patented gabardine, a tightly woven cotton twill that was weatherproof without being heavy. The fabric breathed. It moved. By 1914, the British War Office had commissioned Burberry to adapt its rain gear for officers in the trenches, and the trench coat entered history not as fashion but as infrastructure.

The coat's details are functional. The storm flap channels water away from the chest. The D-rings once held grenades. The belt is adjustable because soldiers wore the coat over layers. Burberry built the garment to solve a problem, and the silhouette became iconic because it worked.

This is the origin myth Burberry returns to. Every creative director inherits the trench and must decide what to do with it. Some add. Some subtract. Lee has chosen reduction.

L'ère Christopher Bailey et l'identité britannique

Christopher Bailey joined Burberry in 2001 and became chief creative officer in 2009. Under his direction, the house leaned into Britishness as a brand proposition. The campaigns featured British actors, British models, British weather. The runway shows were held in London during a period when many heritage houses were consolidating in Paris or Milan. Bailey understood that Burberry's strength was not in reinvention but in amplification. He made the check louder, the trench more central, the brand more legible.

This strategy worked until it didn't. By the mid-2010s, Burberry's check had saturated the market. The pattern appeared on everything: scarves, bags, dog collars, umbrellas. The house had become accessible to the point of ubiquity, and ubiquity is the enemy of desire in luxury. When Bailey stepped down in 2018, Burberry's challenge was clear. It needed to become exclusive again without alienating the customer base that had made it profitable.

Riccardo Tisci, who succeeded Bailey, brought a streetwear-inflected aesthetic and a new monogram designed by Peter Saville. The TB logo was crisp, interlocking, easier to control than the check. Tisci's collections mixed tailoring with hoodies, heritage with hype. The work was competent. It did not move the needle. When Tisci departed in 2022, Burberry's stock was down, and the house was in search of a sharper identity.

Daniel Lee et la réduction

Lee came from Bottega Veneta, where he had spent three years building a vocabulary of sculptural leather goods and precise tailoring. His work there was defined by restraint. No logos. No obvious branding. The bags sold because of their shape and hand, not because of what they signalled. At Burberry, Lee has applied the same logic to a house that has historically relied on signals.

His first collection for Burberry, shown in February 2023, opened with outerwear in solid tones. Navy. Camel. Black. The trench appeared midway through, reimagined as a car coat with a nipped waist and no belt. The check was absent from the runway. When it did appear in the collection, it was scaled down, used as a lining or a scarf, never as the lead.

The reaction was mixed. Some critics praised Lee for giving Burberry a modern edge. Others questioned whether a house built on heritage could afford to distance itself so sharply from its own archive. The clothes were beautiful, but they did not look like Burberry. That was either the point or the problem, depending on where you stood.

Lee's second and third collections have followed the same trajectory. He has introduced new silhouettes: a rose-shaped clutch, a puffer jacket with exaggerated shoulders, trousers with a clean front pleat. He has worked with British mills to develop new weights of gabardine and cashmere. The tailoring is sharp. The palette is restrained. The shows are well received. But the question remains: who is this for?

Les chiffres et la réalité du marché

Burberry's financial results tell a different story than the runway. In the fiscal year ending March 2024, the house reported a 4 per cent decline in revenue. Comparable store sales dropped 7 per cent. The Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for nearly 40 per cent of Burberry's revenue, saw a sharper decline as Chinese consumers pulled back on luxury spending. Leather goods, which Lee has prioritised, have not yet compensated for the slowdown in outerwear and accessories.

The stock price has reflected this. Burberry's market capitalisation has fallen by more than 40 per cent since Lee's arrival. In November 2024, the house announced cost-cutting measures, including a reduction in store staff and a pause on new openings. The dividend was suspended. These are not the moves of a house in ascent.

Part of the challenge is timing. Lee's tenure has coincided with a broader contraction in the luxury market. Consumers are spending less. They are buying fewer items and holding them longer. The appetite for newness has cooled. In this environment, a creative director who is asking customers to forget what they know about a brand is working against the current.

But part of the challenge is also internal. Burberry's identity has always been tied to accessibility. It is not Hermès. It is not Loro Piana. It is the house that made luxury outerwear available to a wide audience, and that accessibility is baked into its pricing, its distribution, and its image. Lee's vision is more refined, more exclusive, more controlled. It is not clear that Burberry's infrastructure can support that vision at scale.

Où en est Burberry maintenant ?

Walk into the Regent Street flagship today and you will see a store that is cleaner, quieter, more considered than it was five years ago. The check is present but not dominant. The trench coats are displayed like sculptures. The leather goods are given space to breathe. It feels less like a department store and more like an atelier. Whether that is what Burberry's customer wants is the open question.

Lee is not the first designer to try to elevate a heritage house by stripping it down. Phoebe Philo did it at Céline. Hedi Slimane attempted it at Saint Laurent. The strategy works when the designer's vision aligns with a latent desire in the market. It fails when the house loses its core customer before the new customer arrives.

Burberry is in the middle of that transition now. The trench coat on the mannequin has no belt, but it still has the storm flap's ghost stitched into the shoulder. You can see where the hardware used to sit.