Burberry has announced that it will condense its current fashion show calendar of two menswear shows (staged in January and June) and womenswear shows (in February and September) into two gender-combined, seasonless catwalk collections, simply dubbed “February” and “September,” with no pre-season offerings. The clothes will be available to buy immediately and the advertising campaign will also be released at the time of the show.
The old system of catwalk shows has, “historically been shown to essentially an industry audience of press, media, buyers and people that we collaborate with,” Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey tells BoF.
“We are opening it up to an audience who just do not, and should not, have to think about our industry’s ways and approaches and timings. You can’t force a different audience to understand something that is designed as an industry event,” he continues, explaining that, “All the things we’ve been doing since then have been steps to get closer to an audience that loves fashion, loves the energy of fashion, the music, the spectacle, the people. It just feels like a natural next step.”
The announcement comes at a time when the CFDA in New York have commissioned the Boston Consulting Group to look into the “broken system” of showing clothes up to six months before they are available to buy at NYFW, and a number of designers are individually experimenting with gender-combined and genderless presentations.
The new show, campaign and sales regime will begin at Burberry from September 2016.