End of partnership that kept Burberry at the
leading cultural edge
Analysis: Could Marco Gobbetti be followed out of
British luxury brand by creative director Riccardo Tisci?
Jess
Cartner-Morley
@JessC_M
Mon 28 Jun 2021
13.08 BST
The
departure of Marco Gobbetti as chief executive of Burberry raises the key
question of whether Riccardo Tisci, whom Gobbetti appointed creative director
soon after he joined, will remain at the luxury fashion brand.
A desire to
be closer to his family in Italy was given as the reason behind Gobbetti’s
decision to quit Burberry, and Tisci too is thought to have found it difficult
to be away from family in Italy for prolonged periods during the pandemic. The
designer was a fashion student in London in his teens and has a deep affection
for British culture and subculture, but the pull of his homeland remains
strong. Italy has many deep-pocketed luxury brands and a shortage of exciting
design talent, so opportunities are likely to present themselves.
While
Gobbetti focused on raising price points and elevating Burberry’s luxury
status, Tisci worked on keeping Burberry relevant – a huge challenge over the
past year, as the pandemic has put the fashion industry on the back foot. The
charity partnership with the footballer Marcus Rashford, who starred in a
recent advertising campaign, was a symbol of how Burberry successfully
positioned itself at the progressive leading edge of culture.
A label
whose signature check pattern once had such combative overtones that it was
banned by nightclub bouncers looking to keep out trouble is now a pioneer of
gender-neutral clothing. The brand has committed to climate neutrality by next
year, and climate positivity by 2040.
Burberry is
Britain’s only major luxury fashion brand. This means that a Burberry catwalk
or shop window is as much about selling an appealing image of modern Britain as
it is about designing clothes. Backed by Gobbetti, Tisci has brought to
Burberry the uncompromising, hard-edged aesthetic he pioneered during his
previous job at Givenchy. In the most recent catwalk show, released digitally
last week, trench coats came with the sleeves ripped off, and were accessorised
with nose rings. The mood music of Tisci’s Burberry wavers between menace and
melancholia, with occasional blasts of mischief. It is quite a stretch for a
British luxury brand, where bread-and-butter sales come from investment coats
that hang in corner offices and in the cloakrooms or expensive restaurants, and
polo shirts worn in smart golf clubs.
It was
Christopher Bailey, who preceded Tisci in his dual role as designer and chief
executive of Burberry, who pivoted Burberry from being a British heritage brand
to an international fashion powerhouse. Under Bailey, Burberry’s touch points
were bookish, bohemian, and with a lyrical connection to the British
countryside. The gardens of Vita Sackville-West, and the landscape paintings of
David Hockney, were among his references. Under Gobbetti and Tisci, Burberry
has looked at Britain’s future rather than at its past, shaking off fashion
history and taking its cue from the cultural and political preoccupations of
the next generation.
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