The Downfall of Burberry

Lucia Guedan, a final-year Womenswear Fashion Design student at the London College of Fashion(LCF), University of the Arts London, is preparing for the Reimagining Materials Competition. The competition is a collaboration between Burberry and the Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), a research centre based at LCF. In response to sustainability, the competition gives a new life to the production material excess by requiring students to create designs using fabric offcuts of Burberry. “This competition allows me to look back at Burberry’s origins – designed with a hyper practical use of trench fabrics for adventurers,”

Guedan is passionate about digital fashion design through 3D printing and using platforms such as Clo3d and Blender. This goes hand in hand with their innovative and futuristic style that is inspired by future fantasy and fiction. To Guedan, fashion is not about “more is more”, they believe in producing with meaning and ethically and sustainably.

When asked about their thought on the current state of Burberry, Guedan is not optimistic about it. “The story of Ernest Schackelton wearing a Burberry gabardine has diluted into just another commercial high fashion brand who only cares about making money. It is a crucial time now for Burberry to put out interesting designs. Hence I would like to give my two cents on making a functional and industry-based product that aligns with Burberry’s legacy”. In reality, statistics agree that the company is currently experiencing a challenging phase. Burberry has been experiencing a downfall in value, with share prices decreasing 26% between March and June 2024, reaching the brand’s lowest share in more than a decade.

Courtesy of Burberry

The Height of Burberry

The British Luxury brand Burberry was established in 1856 in London, England. The brand is known for its iconic checkered patterns and trench coats. The checker trademark consists of Burberry’s traditional color scheme, a beige background with red, white, and black intersecting stripes.

At one time, the company was one of the most influential fashion houses in the Western world. It was recognized and worn by Queen Elizabeth II, former US President Barack Obama, and top model Naomi Campbell, among many notable individuals.

One can’t help but compare the current state of Burberry with the 17 years of Christopher Bailey as the chief design officer. Bailey was chief of Burberry from 2001 to 2018. He was the mastermind for the triumphant rescue, from the hands of oversaturation and fraud, of the Burberry checkered print and the trench coat.

Bailey was a non-negligible factor that brought Burberry up to its height. During his last 7 years at the company, there was an impressive 729% increase in share prices compared to 2002 when he first started, securing the brand’s position as a heritage luxury fashion house.

Out of FTSE 100 After 15 Years

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 is a stock market index that measures the performance of the top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). It serves as a symbolic milestone for brands to prove their recognized position in the market.

Burberry has been the worst performer among luxury stocks over the last five years. Now, with the addition of being disqualified from the chart, it is not only a warning sign about Burberry’s continuously dropping sales revenue, but also a harsh truth that consumers are falling out of interest in the brand’s designs. It is reported that the brand’s underlying sales plunged 21% from mid-March to 29 June 2024.

Courtesy of Burberry

How It Went Wrong

The Burberry downfall started during Bailey’s last two years at the company, and since then Burberry has been going down a gradually deteriorating path. The drastic change in aesthetics of every recent collection shows a lack of clear brand identity and a unique touch by the Creative Director.

Using the now Creative Director of Burberry, Daniel Lee as an example, following his successful strategy as the former Creative Director at Bottega Veneta with the introduction of Bottega Green, Lee quickly recreated a Burberry Blue hue soon after joining the company, claiming his takeover. However, this supposedly signature brand color has been nowhere to be seen since its launch in the Spring 2024 collection followed by the Burberry Streets campaign, sparking confusion in the industry about the purpose of this debut.

Industry experts believe that the inconsistency in creative direction is due to a forced dictation by the brand’s upper management team with immediate redirection of the creative approach, based on sales statistics, trends and jumping on the bandwagon to lure the younger generation without a well-thought long-term plan. This ultimately contributes to Burberry’s “identity crisis” with collections that are far from the chief designer’s idealistic proposition, given the restriction of artistic freedom, and it has not been well received by consumers.

Courtesy of Burberry

The Second Coach?

Besides the dictatorship of creative direction from the upper hand, the brand’s new market strategy to revive the brand is one of the alleged reasons for Burberry’s ongoing downfall.

With Joshua Schulman, a former CEO of fellow luxury brand, Coach, being appointed as the CEO of Burberry in July 2024, the brand is reported to be on a change in its direction with “immediate actions”. With this replacement of the chief executive, the brand aims to reconnect with its core customers and hopefully revive the company’s sales, which have been continuously dropping up to this point.

There have been rumors in the industry about Schulman’s plan to change Burberry’s marketing game by lowering the entry price point and transforming the brand into an affordable luxury house just like Schulman’s former company, Coach. With Coach’s recent successful rebranding despite also being in this slowing luxury market, it is no surprise that the former CEO of the brand would like to follow suit given the contrasting state of Burberry. However, the market is skeptical of the possibility of Burberry’s turnaround.

Daniel Lee’s Burberry

In 2022, English fashion designer Daniel Lee replaced Burberry’s creative director at the time, Riccardo Tisci. Fans were excited to see what this former creative director of luxury fashion house Bottega Veneta had in mind for his take on Burberry, with the brand’s stock price immediately rising by nearly 10% when the news of Lee’s appointment was announced. Moreover, since Schulman’s leading on Burberry, the brand says they are focusing on “more of the timeless, classic attributes that Burberry is known for”.

Unfortunately, Lee’s collections didn’t seem to impress the public as much as they were hoped to, given the continuously dropping sales. The Chinese demographic, as the brand’s biggest market that accounts for 30% of revenues according to Vogue Business, has been vocal on social media, broadcasting their disappointment with the brand’s direction, and the Spring-Summer 2025 collection is not an exception.

Courtesy of Burberry

London Fashion Week

Showcased at the London Fashion Week, the collection went for a reinterpretation of Burberry classics with a fresh color palette and various reworkings. Focusing hugely on its outerwear, the signature trench was transformed into a cropped, swingy cape, into smart military jackets, or blouses with a bowtie neck. The checkered print also came in more subtle hues, incorporating in garment details such as on built-in belts, and a cropped duffel, apart from the coat linings.

Before the runway, Burberry released a few teasers on their Instagram. The vintage posters highlighted the brand’s heritage and craftmanship, and its embrace of British culture and style. “It is disappointing that the teasers were irrelevant to the actual visual of the collection,” says Chinese fashion YouTubers AHA LOLO in their commentary on the Burberry SS25 show.

The set design, which sets the mood and provides a backstory for the collection, is another artistic defect. Collaborating with British artist Gary Hume, the medical-green backdrop for Burberry’s SS25 show was inspired by Hume’s installation ‘Bays’, designed in 1990. “The green in the pieces was weirdly very similar to surgeon’s gowns,” says Hume in an interview with Wallpaper*. The concept of the artistic direction was niche, which according to AHA LOLO, was difficult to digest for a global audience including Chinese consumers.

The unreliability of culture and inability to convey the story through the garments results in a poor review of the collection.

The Future of Burberry

While the brand aims to inject a more commercial approach and recede to the familiarity of Burberry classics for now, fans and fashion enthusiasts believe the brand should create more aspiring and innovative designs to spark the public’s interest again.

The industry awaits a grand return from Burberry.