What is the essence of a Burberry show? Is it the big check tent? Or perhaps the roll call of multigenerational British talent? At his fourth show for the British luxury brand yesterday evening, Daniel Lee had plenty of the latter, including Lila Moss, Iris Law, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jourdan Dunn, and Olivia Colman in the front row, plus Edie and Jean Campbell, and Lily Donaldson on the runway. But the designer traded his usual five ring circus-size outdoor venues for the lobby of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. The only decoration in the Brutalist structure (which King Charles once said looked like a nuclear power station) was an installation by British artist Gary Hume featuring holes cut out of green tarpaulin.
The stripped-back setting kept the spotlight on Lee’s renewed focus for summer 2025 on Burberry’s stock in trade: phenomenal outerwear. London Fashion Week is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and a wonderful show curated by Sarah Mower at the British Fashion Council exhibition space highlights key moments in the city’s fashion history, including former creative director Christopher Bailey’s seasonal riffs on Burberry’s iconic trench coat. With its functional design invented during World War One including a storm shield to allow water to run off it smoothly, the trench is an absolute staple in a country where it rains more days than not during the year.
The season’s hazy color palette of dawn, wisteria, hemlock beige, and gale gray recalled misty mornings in the English countryside (and was drawn from Hume’s abstract nature paintings, on view at Sprüth Magers gallery in Mayfair, where Burberry hosted an opening Sunday evening). But Lee’s lightweight silk poplin trenches decorated with knight-blue daisies and faux feathers that fluttered as if they had their own wind machines made a convincing case for what to wear during the dog days of summer.
Whether weather-ready or not, nearly every piece in the collection took cues from the trench’s silhouette or construction in some way. There were epaulet-like buttons on blazers and cotton canvas jackets, while D-rings cinched cuffs, collars, and pockets. A lightweight field jacket made from a tri-layer fabric that combined wool, linen, and cotton drew from the house’s heritage of technical fabric innovation, updating the classic Burberry check typically used for coat linings. The signature pattern also appeared on skinny belts and as subtle trims on the straps of shoulder bags. A series of vaguely ’70s cropped capelets and cape dresses with cutout backs laid claim to an outerwear silhouette that has been trending recently. At 168, Lee’s Burberry offered plausible wardrobing solutions, come rain or shine.
