The weather in London this morning was an unwelcome reminder that things in Britain really aren’t that great. As if attesting to our clownish government, cost-of-living-crisis, and rapidly slumping currency, the steady drizzle that lingered over the city was a perfect example of pathetic fallacy, that mood-conjuring literary device your GCSE English teacher taught you about.
For all this country’s flaws, though, Riccardo Tisci — a self-professed Anglophile — remains a fan. It is, after all, in London that the storied designer came of age as a creative, graduating from the Central Saint Martins BA around the turn of the millennium. It was then, back in his student raver days, that he first began to develop an appreciation for the complex mesh of visual registers and archetypes that make up the nation’s sartorial identity – how gabardine trench coats, military-grade tailoring, clompy boots, ripstop tracksuits and twill chore jackets all hold equal weight in what defines ‘British dress’.
Since taking the helm at Burberry, Britain’s most emblematic luxury house, in 2018, his output has largely comprised intelligent, observed-from-the-outside interpretations of these tropes. Time and again, he’s found innovative ways to pick them apart and reassemble them in ways that illustrate the common threads that run through approaches to dressing typically kept apart.
Drawing a ritzy crowd that included Stormzy, Erykah Badu and Ye (!!) to an industrial lot off the Old Kent Road – for what is widely rumoured to be his last outing for the house – Riccardo presented a collection that cut through the nation’s generally morose mood with a welcome sense of optimism and levity – “togetherness and joy”, as he put in this season’s show notes. The first glimpse of that came in the form of the show’s invitation – a cerulean silk foulard the colour of clement-weathered sea and sky.
Staged against a sandy backdrop of Burberry-beige draped curtains, Riccardo looked to perhaps one of the most gleeful settings that this country has to offer – the great British seaside. “In summer, in Britain, the beach is a place of democracy, of community,” Riccardo wrote, “it is where people from all cultures can join together in simple pleasures” – sticks of rock, Punch-and-Judy shows, and pierhead funfair rides. Indeed, as anyone who’s ever visited a British beach town will know, these littoral hotspots – lacking the exclusive beach club mentality of many of their Mediterranean counterparts – are some of the few places where Britain’s stern class divisions come undone; where people from all walks of life convene and lay down their beach towels side-by-side on the shingle shores.
Granted, there were a good number of looks and pieces that directly nodded to beach garb. Full-length jersey dresses had crotch cutouts that revealed integrated swimsuits, sometimes with crystal chainmail numbers over the top, while singlet straps hung down from the waistband of charcoal men’s suit trousers. Flip-flops abounded in both heeled and flat versions, while sunhats and visors came in lace, leather and showerproof, see-through PVC. The dropped sleeves of svelte velvet evening gowns were inflated like armbands, a look echoed in a pair of metallic leather bags strapped on the biceps, while shark prints decorated baggy sports jerseys, nodding to Riccardo’s Twitch-livestreamed SS21 collection for the house.
Obvious motifs like these aside, though, the intention here was less to create a British resort collection, and more to explore the various typologies that might find themselves drawn together at Riccardo’s fantasy seashore. Guys in blue collared bombers, shirts and ties – roomy graphic sweatshirts and pants with gauzy chiffon skirt overlays – met officious men in square-shouldered, double-breasted suits in black, marigold yellow and sky blue wool. The casualness of layered denim halterneck vests, billowing skirts and tie-around jacket sleeves was counterposed by svelte lace bodysuits and fishtail fish-net dresses; the rough-and-tumble toughness of grommeted leather harness dresses and biker jackets by the frump and daintiness of pastel satin negligées with flowing trains and blazers with lacy bra appliqués.
These pieces spoke to the idea of the beach “as a place where humanity meets, a point where different worlds collide,” Riccardo wrote. “That tension between dressing and undressing, between revelation and protection, underwear and outerwear, all feels relevant to now and part of Burberry’s modern DNA.” More than a simple play of opposites, though, it displaced and redeployed familiar garments and the characters we associate them with, revelling in “the incongruity of a Gothic figure fully dressed in Black on summer sand; the surreality of an evening gown on the beach; a rose – the symbol of England – stripped to its thorns.”
While Riccardo may have sought to elicit a “spirit of togetherness and joy” with this collection – which it should be noted, he did in many respects – there was nonetheless a poetic eeriness – a slight mournfulness, even – to the show itself. Soundtracked by an acapella aria performed by soprano opera singer Nadine Sierra, an 80-strong cast that included Naomi Campbell, Kiki Willems, Mariacarla Boscono and Irina Shayk, filed around the cavernous space, in an elegant, sombre procession. That’s not to say that it felt overly heavy – rather, it both respectfully recognised the mood of the nation beyond the venue’s walls, and nodded to the time-tested ability of Britain’s people to power through even the grimmest of times. After all, no matter how bleak life on these islands may get, we will always have the simple pleasures of our great British beach towns.
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Images courtesy of Burberry