In today’s issue:
A closer look at Burberry’s London Fashion Week show, which was the biggest one of the week for good reason (unless, well, you’re Daniel Lee).
The bustline I can’t unsee.
Loose Threads, including John Galliano rumors, Charli XCX x H&M backlash, and more.
If you have a tip or story request, Back Row’s anonymous tip line is open.
Burberry’s Problem
“An activist from PETA stormed the catwalk in a dress reading ‘Animals Aren’t Fabric’, though, at this point, that’s probably the least of Burberry’s worries.” —Bethan Holt, the Telegraph
Burberry was forced to show under extreme financial duress at London Fashion Week on Monday. Creative Director Daniel Lee’s spring 2025 collection walked for a bunch of people who were sitting there thinking about how badly the brand is performing, wondering if these clothes would save it.
Burberry dropped out of the LTSE100 (the 100 companies with the biggest market cap listed in the U.K.) just this month, with a valuation 56 percent lower from what it was at the end of last year. In July, Joshua Schulman joined as CEO; he’s known for leading Michael Kors from 2021 to 2022 and serving as president of Coach. So everyone’s wondering when we’re going to see him transform Lee’s work into proper mall goods, ludicrously capacious bags and all. Or maybe Burberry will replace Lee, and if they do, I will be sitting at my laptop with popcorn taking in that unhinged rumor mill like an IV to my veins. (“John Galliano for Burberry!” “No, Virginie Viard!” “Wait — Christian Siriano?”)
Jess Cartner-Morley summed up what we saw on the runway nicely in the Guardian:
Customers at the accessible-luxury price point want pieces that are recognisable as designer. For Burberry, that means the check, which was all over this catwalk, in saddle bags and on tracksuits. “I really like the check,” Lee said. “I want to treat it as one of the most precious elements of the house, in the way that the trench is.”
The coats got a lot of praise, but I’m not sure what that means, since reviewers have done that every season under Lee as Burberry’s stock just sank like a stone. After the February show, Bazaar called the coats “perfect” in a headline, while Vogue said one overcoat had “a magnificent off-green collar.” Maybe all it means is that Burberry has a large ad budget and reviewers have to find something to praise.
Looks in the spring 2025 show included trench-inspired day dresses; coats with what I can only describe as little bathmats on the collars; glittery cocktail dresses made of draped sequined fringe; loose plaid pants with zippers up the front; pleated maxi skirts with high slits; cropped biker jackets; and — it must be noted, even though it’s been a big runway trend — ludicrously capacious bags.
Looking at this show, Burberry is doing it all wrong. Longtime Back Row readers have delved into the psyches of luxury fashion clients for years through the series “Retail Confessions,” in which sales people talk about what it’s really like to sell high-end clothes. The Cut recently published a feature focusing on the perspective of the clients (Very Important Clients or VICs), the thesis being that these brands are forced to court the top two percent of customers — who account for 40 percent of luxury fashion sales — even though the people who work at the brands think these customers are tacky.
Yet, if you make luxury fashion ready-to-wear, you either sell to people like that, or you go in the opposite direction, like The Row and Khaite, and offer something “tasteful” for an imagined customer who works at an art gallery and dresses the opposite of Charlotte York. There’s very little in between that seems to work now. Like so much else in the world, aesthetics have been polarized. The VIC aesthetic, as seen in photos in The Cut piece, is Bravo. These women look like viable candidates for Real Housewives.
Burberry is stuck in that in-between. Chanel was probably also also stuck there under Virginie Viard. I don’t know if the mass market lower-priced direction Burberry allegedly plans to go is the right one, but if it is, I would imagine the brand needs to become more like another Canada Goose — outerwear for people who buy Golden Goose sneakers for themselves and their children — than whatever it is now.
Let’s say Burberry went in the VIC direction. Well, the VICs, according to one stylist, now want Schiaparelli where they used to want Chanel. It’s surely no accident that so much of what I’m seeing on runways and red carpets now looks like Schiaparelli redux, including Burberry’s glitter fringe dresses. Maybe Burberry could lean into that and get a whole lot weirder and bolder. It would be more interesting than watching the brand try to mall-ify itself
.Whatever is going on, Schulman told Bloomberg that he’s not taking the brand “downmarket” (their word) but “wants to stay the course on elevating the brand but with a better balance on prices” (Bloomberg’s words again, whatever it means).
Asked if Burberry would keep Lee, Schulman only said, “Today’s show was beautiful.”
This Bustline Is Everywhere
Emmys red carpet fashion seemed quiet this year (the step-and-repeat wasn’t perfect but was a lot less ugly than the last one, so there’s that). Maybe attendees didn’t feel like bothering since this was the second Emmys this year after last year’s was pushed to January because of the actors’ strike. Sofia Vergara wore a striking red Dolce & Gabbana gown with rather mesmerizing draping around the bustline and torso. It looked like the bust seen at Lauren Sanchez favorite Nensi Dojaka’s recent London show. A friend called it the “boobs hugged from the back trend,” and now I can’t unsee it.
Loose Threads
, who writes Style Files here on Substack and published the dual biography of John Galliano and Alexander McQueen Gods and Kings, reports that she hears John Galliano could end up at Alexander McQueen. He was rumored to be in the running for Givenchy, but that ended up going (appropriately, I think) to Sarah Burton. Thomas writes, “It’s pretty clear to anyone who even vaguely follows fashion that Seán McGirr was a bad hire to replace Sarah Burton at Alexander Mcqueen.” She adds, “What it proves to me is that designers don’t really matter anymore. How else to explain Alessandro Michele, who tanked at Gucci, being hired by its fellow Kering-owned brand, Valentino.”
H&M had Charli XCX perform a mini-concert to open London Fashion Week, which looked actually fun instead of like, say, the Met Gala, where you know everyone there is afraid of somehow messing up instead of having fun. Social media users have been jumping on Charli for taking the H&M deal, but this is hardly resulting in Blake Lively-level backlash. Sure, in a perfect world, everything we bought, from our clothes to our iPhones, would be ethically made by people who were fairly compensated for their labor and worked in safe conditions. However, just attacking her seems to miss a lot of things. One, a lot of people can’t afford clothes that cost more than H&M prices. Two, Charli XCX doesn’t hold herself up as a paragon of sustainability and hasn’t framed her endorsement as contributing to the social good, the way Kourtney Kardashian tried to when she became Boohoo’s “sustainability ambassador.” Charli has built her brat brand around being a “365 party girl” who’s not into “cool vibes.” She probably blew up this summer in part because people want an escape from thinking about issues all the time.
The JW Anderson show (which Dazed abbreviated “J Dubs”) touched on what Jonathan Anderson called “a girly independence… A lot of what I do in the brand is reflected on my sister or people around me in the studio,” he said. “Maybe it’s a Northern Irish thing. They sort of pack together on a night out. They call each other ‘the girlies.’ There’s a toughness there that I like.”
Harry Styles sat front row at S. S. Daley in London, next to Anna Wintour. He is a minority investor in the brand, which he wore on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens (somehow failing to start a trend of zeitgeist-y stars appearing in Better Homes & Gardens, though this now feels like the perfect opportunity for Dua Lipa).
According to Who What Wear, bag charms are a street-style trend. Yes, as in people clipping tiny stuffies to their purses. The ecomm on this story includes a Loewe peapod charm in calfskin that costs $490. Loewe also makes a fish one that’ll run you $550.
I always think of Tom and Lorenzo calling that bustline Mickey Mouse ears.
Burberry finally recovers from the chav plaid thing and gets hit by the Succession whammy. Ooof!
I think the VICs in the Cut piece look incredibly tacky.