Burberry reveals Daniel Lee's "first creative expression" for label

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 6, 2023

The Burberry show at London Fashion Week is set to be the hottest ticket in town as the industry gets to see what new creative director Daniel Lee has up his sleeve. 

And while we wait a couple of weeks for the big reveal, the company has shared a campaign that’s “the first creative expression” of the brand under Lee.

That means a set of images and a film shot by Tyrone Lebon with an original score by musician John Glacier. 

The cast of both the film and photos includes Glacier, as well as actor Jun Ji-hyun, model and musician Lennon Gallagher, model Liberty Ross, footballer Raheem Sterling, musicians Shygirl and Skepta, and actor Vanessa Redgrave.

It’s an interesting mix that plays up to the stated aim of Burberry’s CEO and its creative director to make the most of the brand’s Britishness with that cast being (mainly) British or UK-based. 

But it’s a Britishness that isn’t backward looking with a multicultural, multi-ethnic outlook that also takes in a wide age range.

The locations for the shoot, including Trafalgar Square and Albert Bridge, also emphasise the British aspect of the offer.

It’s interesting too that the firm has come up with a new version of the Burberry logo that it says is “archive inspired” and that features heavily in the campaign images.

The original Equestrian Knight Design was the winning entry of a public competition to design a new logo over 120 years ago. The design builds on that and also features the Latin word 'Prorsum' meaning ‘Forwards’.

Under Riccardo Tisci, the TB monogram introduced in 2018 had been the key focus for Burberry logo products.

Whether it’s significant that the company is emphasising the word Prorsum remains to be seen. For some years under Christopher Bailey, Burberry used the word Prorsum for its highest-end collection before the firm’s separate labels (Prorsum, London and Brit) were dropped by Bailey’s CEO and creative chief successors to focus on the single brand.