Lumley returns to Burberry to fly the flag for true British style
Actress becomes a model ambassador 50 years after she first helped promote the hip homegrown label
DAME JOANNA LUMLEY is back at Burberry decades after she first modelled for the legendary fashion house in the 1970s.
Wearing a look designed by creative director Daniel Lee, the 77-year-old actress posed last night to celebrate the brand’s “takeover” of Harrods.
Her outfit echoed the looks she modelled in 1976 alongside the late Patrick Anson, the 5th Earl of Lichfield, a celebrated society photographer.
Burberry is taking over Harrods for the month of February. Its facade has been lit up in the fashion brand’s knight blue and the doormen’s classic green uniform replaced by a blue check.
Dame Joanna got her acting break as a Bond girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service, but before that she was a sought-after fashion model in London and Paris.
After paying 10 guineas to learn the trade at the Lucie Clayton Finishing School on Bond Street she was hired first to work as a mannequin in the suits department at Debenham & Freebody.
There, she was spotted by the designer Jean Muir and selected to act as a house muse.
Once she took on the role of Purdey, the genre-defining female spy in The New Avengers whose haircut was copied by women all over the country, her character required a stylish wardrobe and the costume department chose a Burberry trench coat.
“My character Purdey once wore a Burberry raincoat – one of the first examples of product placement back in 1975,” Dame Joanna told The Telegraph.
She featured in an advertising campaign for the brand a year later, wearing a matching check skirt and raincoat, a camel cape, and a dove-grey trench.
“Lord Lichfield and I were in a series of gorgeous photographs, taken by Patrick himself, wearing Burberry raincoats and country clothes,” she said.
“We shot in London: maybe at Shugborough, the Lichfield family seat. I think Lady Annunziata Asquith was also one of the models: we lounged and smiled and slouched and tried to look as cool and as classy as all get-out.”
Dame Joanna describes Burberry’s signature check as “the stamp of British style all over the world", and says she despises the logo-centric, poorly made and elasticated athleisure styles popular today. True British style, she added, is defined by “immaculate cut, understated colour schemes, natural materials and sheer drop-dead elegance”.
“I cut my fashion teeth under the watchful and critical eye of Jean Muir, for whom I worked as a house model for a few months in the 1960s, but knew and loved all my life,” she added. “She always showed her clothes teamed with black tights and shoes; like the ubiquitous white trainers of today which make everything look just right.”
Dame Joanna was joined at the Burberry’s event by Dame Mary Berry and Olivia Colman, an indication that the label is aligning itself with British “national treasure” figures to attract an older, affluent group of shoppers.
‘My character Purdey wore a Burberry raincoat – one of the first examples of product placement’