Burberry marks 170 years with 170 faces in its coats
Burberry, the British luxury house built around the trench coat, has put 170 people in front of the camera for its 170th birthday.
The global campaign is called 170: The Anniversary Portraits. It centres on outerwear, the coats and jackets the company is best known for, according to WWD.
The cast mixes people from Burberry's creative community with friends of the brand, locals cast on the street and long-serving staff. That is one portrait for each year of its history.
It was photographed by Jack Day. The shoots took place in four cities: London, New York, Seoul and Shanghai.
The portraits cover 10 of Burberry's most recognisable outerwear styles. That range will be the focus of the anniversary push.
Named faces in the line-up include Crush, Jamie Lloyd, Lila Moss, Lisa Love, Nico O'Reilly, OG Anunoby, Ruthie Rogers, Tan Yuanyuan, Xin Shuang and Yeonkoung Kim. The list runs across music, film, sport, dance and fashion, alongside people cast for no other reason than they caught the team's eye.
Two of the portraits come from inside the business. Dawn Bullingham works at Burberry's Castleford factory in northern England and has been with the company for 46 years. Richard Kessell, senior vice president of commercial finance, joined as financial controller in 2002.
Burberry presents the project as a tribute to The Art of the Trench, its 2009 digital initiative that invited people to send in photographs of themselves wearing the brand's coats. The idea then was simple. Anyone could take part.
The new campaign follows an earlier anniversary release, The Trench, Portraits of an Icon, shot by Tim Walker in black and white. That series featured 23 stars from film, music, sport and fashion and introduced an expanded Heritage Collection, a line drawn from the company's archive shapes.
People in London will be able to see the clothes up close. Burberry will open a pop-up at Harrods, the London department store in Knightsbridge, from Friday until 28 October. It will feature the 10 outerwear styles shown in the portraits.
What makes this stand out is the balance. Big names sit next to machinists and finance staff and passers-by. For fans, this means the birthday is told through who wears the coats, not just how they look on a runway.
