As Christopher Bailey sets out to disrupt the fashion calendar with a Burberry collection available the moment it’s shown, Hamish Bowles catches up with him in London to talk about fashion foresight—and gets an exclusive early look at the new pieces.
It’s like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!” exults Christopher Bailey as he walks me through the creative laboratory he has assembled on a light-flooded floor of Burberry’s London HQ. Bailey himself conceived the atrium interior of the imperially scaled prewar building, which is topped by a corrugated clear-plastic roof designed to amplify the sound of En gland’s falling rain (and thus remind everyone of the brand’s roots as the rainwear supplier to the British Empire).
“We have everything from people who just paint, to 3-D printers, embroiderers, packaging designers,” he explains. “I have a whole group of coders, and people involved with photography, music, architecture—we do all our own furniture and buildings. We’ve got photo studios and film studios. It’s basically a little design school.”
Along with supporting craft, Bailey has always been in the vanguard of technological and conceptual innovation—in 2009, for instance, Burberry was the first brand to live stream its runway show— and he is surprised by what he sees as the fashion world’s resistance to embracing technological change. “For an industry that loves moving forward—that’s about newness and inspiring people—how can we not be excited about the thing that has changed every one of our lives?” he asks. “For me, it’s the most thrilling thing—I used to cart my whole freaking CD collection around the world; people used to laugh at me. Now I have it all on my little iPhone. It’s magnificent!
Esta historia es de la edición September 2016 de Vogue.
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Esta historia es de la edición September 2016 de Vogue.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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