It's one of Britain's most iconic fashion brands, but can Burberry weather this storm?

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Burberry is in the trenches right now. Britain's leading luxury fashion brand, home of the iconic beige mac andthatBritish group Burberry recently issued its third profit warning of the year. Retail sales fell 21% in the first fiscal quarter and reports suggest several hundred jobs at the company are also at risk. And the bad news keeps coming. On Monday, Burberry announced the departure of its CEO, Jonathan Akeroyd, who did not join the company until 2022, and suspended dividend payments. Shortly afterwards, shares fell to their lowest level since 2010. Can Britain’s most famous fashion export weather this storm?

Joshua Schulman, who replaces Akeroyds and joins from US brand Coach, will certainly have his work cut out for him in the coming months. It’s a far cry from the 2010s, when Burberry was arguably the biggest draw at London Fashion Week, adored by Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Cara Delevingne, all of whom starred in the brand’s ad campaigns. But it could also be seen as just the latest twist in the story of a divided brand with a chequered past, a story that spans haute couture and cheap knockoffs, the catwalk and the football stands.

Burberry’s heritage dates back to the Victorian era, when apprentice draper Thomas Burberry opened his first clothing store in 1856. His big innovation was to waterproof his thread with lanolin, creating a new weatherproof fabric called gabardine, which resulted in coats that were lighter than a traditional raincoat (which was clammy, smelly and bulky). Gabardine was adopted by polar explorers like Sir Ernest Shackleton. When the First World War broke out, Burberry was tasked with creating a coat that could be worn by officers on the battlefield. The resulting trench coat wasn’t just adopted by soldiers. It proved popular with civilians too, so much so that by the 1930s the company had a dedicated van that drove around London offering same-day deliveries.

The iconic beige, red, black and white check print, meanwhile, was a relatively latecomer. It was first introduced in coat linings in the 1920s, but it didn’t really come into its own until a few decades later, when staff at Burberry’s Paris boutique decided to wrap accessories in the fabric ahead of a visit by the British ambassador in the 1960s. By this point, the brand had a reputation as a solid, quality British brand: it might not have been the most exciting proposition, but it was reliable nonetheless.

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The plaid pattern enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity when it was worn by British pop stars, but by the late '90s, Burberry was struggling. The brand had sold licenses that allowed other companies to use the famous plaid pattern on other products, meaning it appeared on a range of products (beige tartan dog coats, for example) that didn't quite fit Burberry's high-end ethos. Plus, copycat products and knockoffs became a big problem.

A few years later, the check print had become synonymous with rowdy football fans and overdressed Wags, a visual shorthand for what dismayed media commentators called chav culture. A 2002 photo showing theEastEndersActress Danniella Westbrook, dressed in a Burberry plaid outfit, carrying a Burberry handbag and pushing her Burberry-clad daughter in a Burberry stroller, has been called chavtastic by aSunHeadline. Newspapers reported on pubs and bars banning anyone wearing the famous tartan: it was irremediably associated not only with a kind of nouveau riche flamboyance, but also with hooliganism and violence. None of this was particularly good for a brand that was supposed to be synonymous with classic, understated style.

Against this backdrop, Rose Marie Bravo, then the brand’s CEO, hired Christopher Bailey as design director in 2000. Bailey had just spent five years working with Tom Ford at Gucci, and had been at the forefront of transforming the brand from a purveyor of bags and scarves with a drab past into a household name in fashion. One of his first moves was to reduce the number of plaids (in 2004, the company revealed it was stopping making its plaid baseball caps altogether) and begin charting a new direction.

Under Bailey, the brand was both traditional and avant-garde, romantic with a twist. The trench coat, whether in the classic beige or reimagined in bold metallics, lace and painterly prints, became a symbol of cool, thanks to ad campaigns populated by bright young Brits like Emma Watson, Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne. It was the hottest commodity at Fashion Week, its shows a spectacle, with musical performances (which often launched these artists’ careers, as we saw with James Bay and Tom Odell) and the best front row in London. Bravos’ successor, Angela Ahrendts, was also a particularly astute businesswoman, buying up many of the aforementioned licenses to prevent the brand from being diluted, and doubling down on technology and social media. Between 2007 and 2013, annual sales more than doubled to $1.9 billion.

Things started to get a little complicated, however, when Ahrendts was poached by Apple in 2014. Bailey became chief creative officer.AndHe served as the brand’s chairman, but investors didn’t always appreciate the dual role. Sales slowed, and some shareholders also fretted about his high salary. In 2018, he left the brand, and Italian designer Riccardo Tisci took over. He brought a glossy, streetwear-influenced sensibility and seemed to court a younger audience, hiring American models of the moment like Kendall Jenner and the Hadid sisters to walk in his shows. But he never quite captured the imagination of critics and customers.

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After Tiscis left in 2022, the company hired Daniel Lee, a British designer who had recently made a name for himself transforming the fortunes of Italian brand Bottega Veneta. Under Lee’s leadership, Bottega has transformed from a stalwart heritage brand into a fashion powerhouse beloved by the likes of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky. He seemed well-placed to kick off a Burberry revival, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he hails from Yorkshire, like Bailey, and has talked about wanting to restore a sense of Britishness to the brand. He’s delivered front rows and shows that have attracted attention; last year, Britpop scions Iris Law and Lennon Gallagher walked the runway in a blatant attempt to capture some residual cool Britannia. There’s been plenty of talk about Burberry returning to its roots. And yet, despite all this, the reaction remained muted.

To put it simply, Burberry is no longer as fashionable as it was during the Bailey years. But even though it no longer looks like a fashionable brand, the company still pursues what is known as aElevation strategy, an attempt to become an even more upscale brand, from a successful British fashion house to a global luxury force on the level of Gucci. As part of this move, the brand has reportedly raised the prices of its accessories. By one estimate, a recent accessories collection sold for 58% more than previous collections and has cut back on entry-level products, at a time when ambitious shoppers are having to cut back on spending due to the cost of living crisis. The drastic price hikes, in an attempt to appear high-end, appear to have backfired and discouraged buyers. The fashion market is a tricky one at the moment, and only timeless accessories like the Hermès Birkin are bucking the trend: Burberry arguably doesn’t have the same luxury cachet (its signature piece has always been a coat, not a handbag).