Burberry At 170: The Weather, The Trench And The Making Of A British Icon

August 1914. The peaceful English summer had shattered. Europe was becoming a theatre of war; Germany had invaded Belgium, and at Mons, British troops confronted the German advance on the Western Front. 

Rain swept across the battlefield, turning earth to mud and uniforms to sodden weight. In this imagined cinematic moment, Lieutenant Kirk Dunham barked orders beneath the unforgiving sky, his men protected from the rain by the remarkable outerwear that would soon become inseparable from the mythology of British military life.

Half a century later, in downtown Manhattan, another imagined Burberry moment unfolds. Dr Norman Dillard, a sharply dressed psychiatrist commuting from New Jersey, arrives at his hospital in a Burberry trench, felt hat and black leather gloves. 

The war has ended, but the coat’s story has not. In the crisp New York autumn, it has acquired another vocabulary: sophistication.

Then comes 2026. On a warm Rio afternoon, an imagined Giomara Mendes leaves Ipanema as the South Atlantic sun slips beneath the horizon. Over a Burberry Check bikini she throws a trench coat, exchanges beach languor for evening glamour and disappears into the city’s nocturnal rhythm.

Three eras. Three cities. Three personalities. One garment.

That is precisely the enduring genius of Burberry.

From Thomas Burberry’s transformative invention of gabardine, developed in 1879 and patented in 1888—a tightly woven, lighter and more breathable weather-resistant fabric that revolutionised rainwear, what we know and adore today as the Trench coat was born. The trench subsequently evolved from military requirements, with its unmistakable details becoming associated with Burberry’s outerwear during the First World War. 

And now, 170 years after Thomas Burberry founded his house, that philosophy of protection, ingenuity and British weather is being reconsidered with remarkable elegance in ‘170: The Anniversary Portraits’.

Photographed by Jack Day, with film direction by Hector Aponysus, the campaign assembles 170 individuals across London, New York, Seoul and Shanghai, each interpreting ten Burberry outerwear signatures through his or her own personality and surroundings.

Inspired by the house’s celebrated 2009 Art of the Trench, it makes the wearer as important as the garment: outerwear becomes biography. 

The cast moves effortlessly between creative and cultural worlds, including Crush, Jamie Lloyd, Lila Moss, Lisa Love, Nico O’Reilly, OG Anunoby, Ruthie Rogers, Tan Yuanyuan, Xin Shuang and Yeonkoung Kim, alongside long-standing Burberry employees. 

It is an especially astute decision. After all, heritage is not something preserved behind glass; it is something lived, worn and continually reinterpreted.

As Chief Creative Officer Daniel Lee puts it: “For 170 years, our outerwear has adapted to the weather and the way we dress. Each portrait is different, but together they capture individuality and self-expression.” 

The collection itself reads like a concise Burberry wardrobe of weather-defying archetypes. The Long Kensington Heritage Trench Coat, with its structured set-in sleeves, contrasts with the softer, raglan-shouldered Long Waterloo Heritage Trench Coat. 

The men’s Mid-length Camden Heritage Car Coat pares rainwear down to a single-breasted, concealed-button silhouette, while the Leather Kensington Trench Jacket translates the icon into richly textured burgundy nappa leather. 

The Long Cashmere Kensington Trench Coat and men’s Mid-length Hastings Trench Coat exchange traditional weatherproofing for the sensuality of cashmere, the latter appearing in softly brushed grey mélange. 

For women, the Shearling Collar Cashmere Cape, lined in House Check, offers enveloping softness. Then come the modern cold-weather propositions: the glossy nylon Check Highlands Puffer Jacket, with tonal woven Check and funnel neck, and the Check Ambleside Puffer Jacket, where seasonal yarn-beige meets black zip taping. Both are insulated with goose down and feathers and finished with packaway hoods.

Finally, the countryside enters the conversation. The Quilted Nylon Rosedale Coat, distinguished by its shearling collar and trench-inspired construction, and the reversible Quilted Nylon Brighton Overshirt, in shale-green nylon and bold House Check, demonstrate that British practicality need never surrender its glamour. 

What makes the anniversary especially compelling is that Burberry’s 170-year story has never really been about the logo. It is about weather.

Cold rain. Wind. Mud. Mist. The peculiar British meteorological condition in which four seasons can apparently occur before lunch. Thomas Burberry understood that clothing could respond intelligently to such conditions—and that functionality, when executed with imagination, could become beauty.

That is why Burberry occupies an unusual position in British culture. It is more than a luxury label. Like Harrods, it has become an institution; like The Rolling Stones, it has travelled far beyond its original context to become part of Britain’s international cultural vocabulary. 

Its trench has been worn by soldiers, explorers, actors, aristocrats, artists and anonymous Londoners rushing through the rain. Its House Check has become instantly recognisable. Its craftsmanship has survived changing tastes because the original proposition remains magnificently simple: make something useful, make it beautifully, and make it last.

The 170th anniversary therefore feels less like a retrospective than a continuation.

Burberry’s outerwear has crossed battlefields, country lanes, cinema screens, city pavements and fashion runways without losing its essential character. The new portraits merely prove what loyalists have always understood: the trench is never truly the same garment twice. On one person it is protective; on another, romantic. On another, rebellious. On another, quietly aristocratic.

That is the extraordinary achievement of Burberry at 170. Seventeen decades of British ingenuity distilled into something you can put on your shoulders.

Not merely a name on a label, but an inheritance—woven from craftsmanship, weather, invention, memory and unmistakably British confidence.

And, in all honesty, that is precisely why a Burberry coat remains less an impulse purchase than an investment in a piece of living fashion history.

The Burberry Outerwear collection is available now in all Burberry boutiques worldwide and online at https://www.burberry.com.

*Photos courtesy of Burberry.