‘Why does the UK find it so hard to create and sustain luxury fashion brands to match France and Italy?’

Burberry has just launched its latest campaign, the Richard Curtis homage, ‘It’s Always Burberry Weather: London in Love’. Centred around its iconic trench coat, the summer 2025 marketing campaign is one of the pillars of chief executive Joshua Schulman’s strategy to revive the brand and stem the decline in sales and profits.

At the time of the third-quarter trading update, Schulman stated that “Burberry can become a high-performing luxury brand at the top of the sector again”. Burberry is the UK’s last man standing as a major, globally-renowned, luxury clothing brand.

Why is it that the UK finds it so hard to create, and sustain, luxury fashion brands on the scale and influence of French and Italian ones? We have successful luxury hotels, cars, jewellery and restaurants, but nothing in fashion of the scale or influence of Chanel or Gucci, for instance.

Maybe it is because British luxury brands tend to derive from utilitarian products rather than eponymous designers, and often with a menswear origin. Yes, we have the likes of Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, but these, even when owned by major luxury groups with huge marketing budgets, do not have universal recognition.

Perhaps it is because British high-end brands tend to be centred around one product – Barbour waxed jackets, Hunter wellies, Church shoes. While they have a loyal customer base, their popularity waxes and wanes in terms of fashion, and therefore in sales.

Fashion requires constant innovation and reinvention to attract new customers and retain existing ones, a factor that applies to all in apparel retail but harder to achieve if your range is limited to one product type (Hermes being the exception).

Is it wise of Burberry to place so much focus on its core trench coat and its very distinctive heritage check as the key to restoring its luxury status?

It does rain a lot in the UK – but not all the time, and when you are appealing to a global audience you need sales in all climates, not just in Manchester and Seattle.

While outerwear and scarf sales improved during the quarter to December 28, 2024, sales of accessories are boosted by being major gifting items during the festive season. The ‘Wrapped in Burberry’ marketing campaign helped to lift scarf sales, but it also coincided with a current fashion trend for scarves. And trenches.

As with all brands, getting the product right is fundamental. Americans Rose Marie Bravo and Angela Ahrendts, with homegrown designer Christopher Bailey, collaborated to elevate the brand to luxury fashion status in the 2000s and extended the brand into beauty and fragrance – products that raise the profile of brands beyond luxury customers.

Burberry chief creative officer Daniel Lee has not been able to replicate the success he had at Bottega, perhaps the Englishness of the brand is too restrictive. Better coordination between the design and commercial teams, and the return of Paul Price as chief merchandising, product and planning officer, having been at Burberry during its peak, should help.

Meanwhile, stores are the showcase of a brand. Burberry’s Regent Street flagship is a huge, impressive shop, in a prime retail position, perfect for events, a café/restaurant (the existing one closed), but is not just empty of shoppers, it is empty of product.

There are accessories, scarves, capes and trench coats, and a nod to fashion with check-trim trainers, but surrounded by acres of empty space. A cohesive marketing strategy should link the physical stores to the virtual relaunch. This store gives the impression of a brand going out of business, rather than in the process of a major relaunch, which is disappointing.

It is early days for Schulman’s transformation strategy and it is an asset to have the constancy of a core product, but if you want to attract new generations of shoppers you need to highlight more product to excite them and encourage repeat visits to stores, as well as online.