Continuing with the news of the day, which is none other than the equally surprising departure of Riccardo Tisci from the creative direction of Burberry, we now undertake the analysis-study of the collection that the renowned Italian designer presented this Monday, September 26. A group for the next Spring/Summer 2023 season that we now know for a fact that it sounded like a farewell, as long as it will be the last that the designer will sign for the British house, a firm that he will leave at the end of this month after having remained its creative director for nearly five years, following his departure from Givenchy in 2017.
After rigorously complying with the mourning that the British house had imposed on itself on the occasion of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which led they canceled the parade to present this same collection that had initially been scheduled for the last edition of the London Fashion Week —a catwalk that, for its part, continued without altering the dates for its celebration—, finally this Monday the long-awaited parade took place. A show with which Tisci could not get to say goodbye to the audience that, edition after edition, meets to participate in London Fashion Week, having to settle for doing it in front of the select group of guests chosen to attend the presentation. A Group among which the attendance of guests of the stature of the actress Gillian Anderson or Kanye West stood out, A trip to the sands of the coasts of Great Britain
Going deeper into the character and nature of this latest collection created by the Italian for the British firm, following the spirit that has characterized every one of the proposals that he has come to design for Burberry, Tisci has finished building the collection on his revisitation of the purest essence of “what is British.” Action that on this occasion has once again led him to travel to a new place in the geography of the United Kingdom, thus extolling once again the strong ties that the British people continue to maintain with their natural environment, in an adventure that has ended on the white sands of its temperamental coasts. The epicenter of the hot summer days towards which the pieces of the proposal are directed,
“In summer, in Great Britain, the beach is a place that speaks of democracy, of community,” explains the Italian designer himself throughout some statements made on the occasion of the presentation parade of this collection. A place “where people of all cultures can come together” to enjoy “simple pleasures”; and “I wanted to translate that ideology, that emotion, into a complete collection” from which “to express that spirit of union and joy, that reality.”Delving into these drives, “the collection is inspired by the beach as a place where humanity meets, a point where different worlds collide”; where those tensions “between dressing and undressing, between teaching and protecting” are vividly shown, and between that “underwear and clothing” that also end up sharing this scenario. Some tensions that “are felt here as fundamental and as part of Burberry’s modern DNA” underline the Italian designer.
On this ideology built on those principles of community, tension, and freedom, some acceptances that now take on a special meaning in what could be seen as the confrontation that the designer himself would have had with himself when deciding which way to go and with the freedom and enthusiasm with which he now embarks on new projects after deciding to leave the direction of Burberry, we find the latest collection that is rabidly youthful, modern and, yes, quintessentially British.
Continuing with that value of “tension” that is uncovered as the authentic principle from which the language on which the proposal rests has been created, on a color palette in which “forceful” finishes prevail in beige, black, pinks, and indigo blues, we find a collection in which there is no shortage of urban aesthetics based on jeans, bomber jackets and illustrated sweatshirts, tailored ensembles, evening dresses or traditional Burberry trench coats. Typologies that end up being reconstructed under the avant-garde gaze of the Italian designer, who returns them to us in the form of dresses constructed from the silhouettes of bathing suits, or daringly from those of lingerie and intimate and nightwear, in trench coats and jeans “burned” by the sun,
“Inspired by the coast and recontextualized in London, the home and heart of Burberry, this collection embraces the idealism and realism inherent in the quintessence of the British attitude,” they wield from the London firm; about a collection from which “British fantasies are reinterpreted, looking at them with new eyes, in different contexts and new realities,” building here and now a series of new identity images, among which we would find “the incongruity of a gothic figure completely dressed in black on the sands of summer; the surrealism of an evening dress on the beach,” or “a rose, symbol of England, stripped of its thorns”; an iconography that the designer would have used to devise designs as impressive as that pink set with a metallic bikini top, or those designs,