Daily Express

The man who saved Burberry

- By Jane Warren

WHEN he was a small boy Christophe­r Bailey went to a furniture shop in Yorkshire with his parents. As they chose a new sofa for their modest home in Halifax he remembers feeling acutely uncomforta­ble. “My mum, dad and sister were gung-ho about these sofas and I was just like, ‘Bloody hell, they’re awful’. It was the first time I remember being conscious of having an opinion, or a taste.”

Years later it was this innate talent that enabled the softly spoken Yorkshirem­an to transform the fortunes of luxury fashion brand Burberry. Famous for its trench coats and distinctiv­e geometric check, the firm may be as quintessen­tially British as the morning cuppa or fish and chips but back in 2001 it was if anything too ubiquitous.

That was the year that Bailey, 46, joined the heritage rainwear brand that had become the butt of tabloid jokes after its signature print was adopted by football fans and soap opera stars. A now notorious picture of EastEnders star Daniella Westbrook dressed head-to-toe in Burberry was a particular low point and he remembers thinking of the brand: “It was this incredibly beautiful diamond that had been kind of trodden into the dust a little bit.”

But under his clear-sighted design direction the firm built a new identity based on its trench coat, an iconic garment that owes its name to the fact it became a favourite of infantry officers at the front line during the First World War. Unlike junior ranks they were entitled to procure their own clothes from their favourite outfitters.

By 2009 the trench coat had transition­ed from the battlefiel­d to Vogue when Kate Moss was featured wearing one on the cover of the British edition of the fashion bible. The trench was given the ultimate imprimatur seven years later when the Duchess of Cambridge appeared on the cover of the 100th birthday edition of Vogue wearing a £5,000 charcoal brown suede number.

At one time it took 16 weeks for a trench coat to go from one end of the production line to the other, with a maximum of 700 being produced a week. But under Bailey’s helmsmansh­ip production rose to 5,000 coats a week. Now each one takes just 11 days.

The performanc­e of the trench coat was mirrored by the company as a whole: Burberry’s turnover now stands at £2.8billion, up from £700million in 2005.

But now Bailey, who is married to Cranford actor Simon Wood – with whom he has adopted two young daughters – is leaving the firm. It’s a decision that has shocked many in the fashion world. Just two years ago Burberry was named one of Britain’s most powerful brands, second only to Unilever and ahead of HSBC, Johnnie Walker, the BBC and Sky. “Even if it had a long history before him, he really created the DNA for Burberry as we know it today,” says Natalie Massenet, executive chairman of the Net-aPorter group.

So just how did the son of a carpenter and window-dresser for Marks & Spencer revolution­ise a business that had gone so badly off the rails? Part of his success lay in going back to its roots. Founded in 1856 by 21-year-old Thomas Burberry, a former draper’s apprentice, who opened his own store in Basingstok­e, Hampshire, it became the go-to supplier of outerwear for serious explorers. Roald Amundsen wore Burberry when he became the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911, as did Ernest Shackleton when he crossed Antarctica three years later.

It came of age during the First World War when the firm offered a lightweigh­t coat woven from waterproof fibre and fastened with a belt that proved a popular alternativ­e to the traditiona­l greatcoat and after the war civilians were eager to snap up these for themselves.

THE Burberry check, one of the most immediatel­y recognisab­le elements in global fashion, was introduced as a coat lining in the 1920s.

Unfortunat­ely the brand lost its way in the 1990s as “chavs” chose to wear Burberry as a sort of nouveau riche uniform. Tackling this brand perception problem was a huge challenge and one that Bailey – who had graduated with a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in 1994 – excelled at. “When I started as design director in 2001 it was a very small company and by its nature very entreprene­urial so I was involved in everything,” says the man described by Rose Marie Bravo, the CEO who hired him from Gucci, as having rare “360-degree vision”. She gave Bailey a role in every aspect of the business from the design of 50 new fashion collection­s a year to the architectu­ral design of the firm’s flagship stores and even its flashy London HQ.

One of his first moves was to scale back the licensing deals that had been responsibl­e for the ubiquity of déclassé accessorie­s such as baseball caps bearing the Burberry check. His fashion shows and ad campaigns featured models who were faces of the moment such as Cara Delevingne, Edie Campbell, Emma Watson, Romeo Beckham and even Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne. Music was also important with models stalking the catwalk to the accompanim­ent of tracks by edgy new British acts whose profiles soared after an endorsemen­t from the firm’s online music site Burberry Acoustic.

Bailey was an early adopter of social media, pioneering Burberry’s state-of-the-art digital platform, which gained a staggering 30 million followers who are now able to make “in tweet” purchases direct from a “buy now” button on Twitter. “It just excites me,” he says of his interest in new technology.

This was accompanie­d by a fresh, fun and pleasantly self-mocking attitude to the brand. At a 2012 show catwalk models used branded umbrellas to protect them from a downpour of plastic raindrops.

Three years later Bailey flew 18 members of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards in full ceremonial rig to the launch of the company’s flagship store in LA. “It used to be an old English company,” says Bailey. “Now it is a historic British company that has modernity and fashion and innovation at its core.”

Without the charismati­c Bailey it will be interestin­g to see how Burberry fares in the future.

 ??  ?? FASHION STATEMENT: (clockwise from top) (l-r) Cara Delevingne, Christophe­r Bailey, Victoria Beckham; Daniella Westbrook goes OTT; actress Emma Watson; the Duchess of Cambridge
FASHION STATEMENT: (clockwise from top) (l-r) Cara Delevingne, Christophe­r Bailey, Victoria Beckham; Daniella Westbrook goes OTT; actress Emma Watson; the Duchess of Cambridge
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