Yahoo Finance Burberry celebrates freedom with a rave-inspired collection perfect for when we can dance again
Riccardo Tisci feels at home, both in his adoptive London and at the historic house he steers, now that his feet are firmly under the desk as Creative Director of Burberry. As the city’s blue skies blaze behind him on Zoom, the designer said “it took me two and a half years to find my identity with the brand, but I feel like we are there. It takes understanding, you have to feel the flavour of it.”
Adding his own ingredients has taken time, but he’s built up a language that’s definitive, and one that introduces a new generation to the brand, who won’t have heard of its polite tea dresses and princely tailoring during Christopher Bailey’s era but flock to Tisci’s Burberry for the visually impactful pieces, making a statement on Tiktok along the way.
“It’s my job to look at the heritage, the history, and arrive at a new identity,” said the Italian designer. And that sentiment found an expression in the designer’s latest spring/summer 2022 menswear show, where he branched beyond the ‘codes’ of the house - the trench, the check - into new territory.
“I wanted to really look at Burberry as a house for summer, because when you think of it, it’s often associated with winter,” he says.
Indeed, Burberry’s foundations are built on solid ground, quite literally - it’s in heavy duty, serious outerwear that the brand made its name. But Tisci wanted to explore the lightness of summer; taking apart the trench, that perennial drizzly London cover-up, and applying a lighter hand - rendering it sleeveless, and slicing sleeves off shirting too. He also toyed with notions of skin and body - an emerging theme at this season’s men’s shows.
Tisci studied in London, at Central St Martins during the early 2000s, and this collection nodded to that heady time when ‘connectivity’ wasn’t a digital buzzword but a notion that applied to rave, dance and music. “I remember travelling to India in my youth and that sense of freedom, of coming together dancing, there’s a togetherness in it I wanted to explore,” said the designer, who explored that notion of tribalism through common signifiers - swirling shapes on T-shirts and ‘Global Passport’ emblazoned on tops.
The film - which somehow evoked a Mad Max dystopia conjured from the distinctly unglamorous Victoria Docks by the Thames - featured a throng of bodies moving as one to the music, a notion that seems almost antiquated these days. Sky blue - that metaphor for positivity - was a recurring theme.
“It’s a celebration of life,” said Tisci. It’s indicative that this isn’t the first time that phrase has been used during the spring /summer 22 men’s shows, which fall just at the point where we might be beating this virus and emerging from our darkest period.
Menswear brands have been keen to show off their tailoring credentials now that men are easing back into the world, but Tisci took the other direction - there wasn’t a suit to be seen, unless you count the blazers with (again) the arms sliced off. But then, the Gen Z collective who devour Burberry for its boldness - the swamping streetwear shapes, the logomania - don’t go in for suits. Instead, Tisci offers them a new way to express themselves.
Sign up for the Telegraph Luxury newsletter for your weekly dose of exquisite taste and expert opinion.
