Ever found main lines and multiple diffusion lines completely baffling? Well Burberry feels your pain. The quintessentially British brand has decided to wrap up its Prorsum, Brit and London labels to create a unified Burberry “in acknowledgement of the way luxury customers like to experience the brand both on and offline.” Their Chief Creative and Chief Executive Office, Christopher Bailey, explained the reasoning some more, saying, “The behaviour of the luxury customer is evolving, their style is more fluid and this is reflected in the way they shop. The changes we are making allow us to serve this new behaviour more intuitively. By unifying our three lines under one label we can also offer a much more consistent experience of Burberry collections.” The transition begins now, but won’t be complete until 2016.
And it’s not the only news from the brand today: they’ve also announced that they are investing more than £50million in a new trench coat factory in Leeds, West Yorkshire – part of the country where Bailey hails from and where Burberry have been manufacturing for over half a century. The new factory is expected to employ over a thousand people and will open in 2019, but since it is replacing two existing factories in Castlefield and Cross Hills in the county, many of the employees will be moving from the former sites to the new one. As well as a state-of-the-art facility being created during the first phase in the South Bank area of Leeds, a subsequent phase will see the restoration of the Grade I listed Temple Works, which was built by Victorian industrialist John Marshall between 1836 and 1840 and was used as a flax mill in the 19th Century.
Credits
Text Stuart Brumfitt
Photography Jason Lloyd Evans