Caitríona Balfe, draped in a Burberry trench, strides through knee-high grass deep in the Irish countryside, the Victorian Castle Leslie behind her. It’s a setting that suits the humble overcoat-turned-British-style-stalwart. A trusty trench is as at home at a country estate as it is on the backs of next-gen It girls in the smoking areas of the capital’s hottest clubs. To repurpose that old Yves Saint Laurent musing: ‘Fashions fade, a Burberry trench is eternal.’
From bidding farewell to time-travel smash Outlander to playing a ‘manifesting’ Mrs Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, actress Caitríona Balfe is a busy woman. So much so that Dora Davies-Evitt had to hunt her down on holiday at an Irish castle…
And now it’s getting its own showcase. As the Royal Warranted luxury house celebrates its 170th birthday, the V&A opens a new display honouring its most indelible silhouettes. ‘The Burberry trench is deeply ingrained in culture – from Hollywood films and the arts to the catwalk, it has permeated the fabric of society. Proudly made in Britain, it continues to represent British craftsmanship while being recognised and worn around the world,’ says Carly Eck, the house’s Vice President Brand Curator, Archive and Heritage.
It was in 1879 that founder Thomas Burberry invented gabardine. Dispirited with outerwear crafted from oil, rubber and wax, he sought to find an alternative material that was breathable, but still weather-proof. To this day, Thomas’s master creation is woven in the house’s own Yorkshire mill. Then came the coat. In 1912, Burberry patented the trench’s forefather: the Tielocken, a gabardine concoction sans buttons down the front, with a double-buckled belt. Two years later, with the outbreak of the First World War, the style became popular with military men who praised the ease with which they could wrap it around their shoulders at short notice, preferring its versatility and lightweight material to the former heavy woollen interpretations. This was when the style became known as the trench coat.
George V awarded Burberry its first Royal Warrant as a tailor in 1919. Queen Elizabeth II granted her own, in 1955, as a weather-proofer. Then, with its wartime past behind it and with palace approval, the Burberry trench – a button-fronted piece with gun flap and pockets – gained its fashion coronation during the 1960s.
The gents had long favoured the style – the coat carried by Fred Astaire in 1934’s The Gay Divorcee and worn by Queen Elizabeth’s couturier Hardy Amies; the designer’s own is part of the new V&A display – but it became a stylish status symbol for women, too.
Catherine Deneuve donned hers in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in 1964, and ad campaigns full of British pomp (think coiffed beauties waving from stately garden labyrinths; picnic baskets lined up in front of wonky-façaded Cotswold villages) would go on to entice more modish dressers to embrace the charming eccentricities of English elegance. The trench remained a must-have well into the decades that followed.
At the turn of the century, Burberry opened a new flagship store on Bond Street, ushering in a new era. Swiftly, it began blurring the lines between outfitter and fashion-artiste. Christopher Bailey joined the house in 2001, three years later becoming creative director. Riccardo Tisci jumped over
from Givenchy to take the reins in 2018, and Daniel Lee – the house’s current creative director, who had previously overseen Bottega Veneta’s metamorphosis – took over in 2022. Three legendary designers, one house, and one silhouette that just never loses appeal, now
made in louche lamés, contorted into ball gowns and capelets, and encrusted in glittering gems. There’s never been a better time to get into the trenches.
The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon opens at the Victoria& Albert Museum on 21 September. The Caitríona Balfe cover story is first published in the October issue of Tatler, on sale 3 September.
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