Auspiciously, it was raining-yet-warmish when I arrived to see the Burberry pre-spring collection in its Paris showroom. “On days like this” grinned Daniel Lee, “when you don’t know what the weather’s going to do, these are the kind of clothes you want to wear.” At the end of May, exasperatingly, it’s barely stopped bucketing down over western Europe since January.
On the up side, the drizzle and leaden clouds outside created a relatable backdrop for contextualizing the clothes and accessories—and yes, the trenches—that Lee’s designed to arrive in stores from October. “Trans-seasonal, with a soft tactility” is something Lee said about the collection. “Everything has to look good on a hanger.
Worth the money. Because ultimately we’re making expensive clothes we want people to want to wear for a very long time.” And very relatable they turned out to be, both for women and men: a combo of coolly believable London styling and subtly tweaked country classics, filtered through Lee’s intelligent sense of applied fashion, and his fanatical eye for codes and details.
Let’s start with his patchwork peacoats, made in contrasting green-blue country tweeds, for both women and men. With the women’s look, there’s a beige-y gold minimal pie-frill collar on a Princess Diana-in-the-1980s cotton blouse. These two looks—as well as another mixed herringbone-pattern tailored coat with matching flares—jumped right out.
There’s something hip and vaguely Lo.
