Burberry Plans Burberry House on Regent Street, With a Restored Clock
Burberry, the British luxury label, is turning its Regent Street flagship, the main store in its home city, into a building it calls Burberry House. The site will bring collections, heritage, culture and hospitality under one roof, according to WWD.
The project goes beyond clothes on rails. Burberry House will show the brand's history, culture and creativity, and it will offer visitors immersive experiences, meaning displays that surround people rather than sit behind glass. Joshua Schulman is chief executive of Burberry.
The store will also be the first to show the Regent Concept, Burberry's new design language for its shops around the world. A design language is a shared set of choices about materials, layout and look. Burberry says the concept draws on the warmth, elegance and familiarity of the British home. It was created with the interior designer Peter Mikic, and it will be introduced in phases across the company's global retail network.
One of the most visible changes is the return of a familiar object. The restoration will bring the Burberrys clock back to Regent Street. The clock hung outside Burberry's Haymarket headquarters and store for decades. It is made from cast iron, opal glass and decorative gold leaf, and it mixes Victorian and late-1930s design elements. Expert horologists, meaning specialists in clocks and watches, restored it. Most recently it stood in the lobby of Burberry's headquarters at Horseferry House in Westminster.
The building has its own past. In the 1920s it was a cinema. Its circular entrance dome will be restored to recreate the golden appearance it had in that decade. Restoring the dome and bringing back the clock both point the store towards its history, while the Regent Concept points it towards the future.
Burberry has not, in the material released so far, given an opening date for Burberry House. Restoration work and the phased rollout of the new design will take place over time, so visitors to the Regent Street store will see the changes in stages.
