Burberry’s new campaign meets British music icons and rising names.
Burberry’s latest festival campaign lands like a live set caught between acts: quick-fire portraits by Drew Vickers and free-wheeling films by Kim Gehrig frame the mud, amps and makeshift backstage corners that define a British summer stage. Chief creative officer Daniel Lee calls it “a collage—candid moments capturing off-duty fans and headline acts in between gigs,” and the line-up underlines the point. Liam Gallagher and his children Lennon, Molly and Gene share space with Goldie, Seungmin, Loyle Carner, Chy Cartier, John Glacier, Cara Delevingne and Alexa Chung—a cross-generation bill that folds Burberry’s history into a present tense of rave horns and guitar feedback.
The setting is familiar: sound-system stacks, patched grass, a sky that can switch from blue to grey in a verse. Lee calls Burberry “both a means of creative expression and the go-to uniform for festival goers,” and the clothes obey the brief. Highland handbags appear in coated Burberry Check built to shrug off drizzle; packable capes, hooded jackets and Harringtons sit next to nylon or coated-cotton parkas. Mini kilts meet leather jackets, trench coats surface in washed satin, and belts cinch T-shirts reimagined as dresses.
Footwear leans practical: Marsh rubber boots in heritage Check, Moor hiking boots, Potter leather clogs, Urchin suede clogs, and Terrace and Matrix sneakers. The Knight stamp—first pressed on Burberry bags in the eighties—returns on cotton jersey and outerwear, while tonal Check weaves through denim, jersey and argyle knits. Shield motifs, frog and horse charms in sterling silver nod to British nature, and curved Check cross-bodies echo rainwear quilting.
Legacy cuts through the noise. Liam Gallagher appears in his own Burberry parka from Christopher Bailey’s spring 2018 show—a piece the house will reissue in a limited run this July. “Burberry has always been a part of the fabric of the UK,” Goldie says. “You see the Check on the underside of a hat or the inside of a jacket, and then it starts to reverse itself.” The soundtrack answers him with Liquid’s 1991 break-beat anthem “Sweet Harmony,” a piano riff woven into festival memory. The result is less a nostalgia trip than a field recording of how the brand, the music and the crowd keep remixing one another—louder every summer.
