Has any musician affected menswear more than David Bowie? Of course not: The menswear business should have paid him royalties. At today’s Burberry show, the first of significance since the news broke this morning of Bowie’s passing, the house paid impromptu tribute to the most exuberantly original re-inventor of them all. Before and after the show, his songs played. And makeup artist Wendy Rowe applied a glittery stardust sprinkle to the cheekbones of the models.
Backstage, Christopher Bailey said Bowie’s influence was: “huge when I was growing up. He was the music that I got inspired by as a kid. He kind of showed you different ways of living, of expressing your personality, in his music and fashion. And there was the way he lived his life; there was such a private side to him and such a flamboyant side. He had huge impact on many people, certainly me. Not yesterday but the day before we were looking at a picture of Bowie wearing a Burberry trenchcoat in the ’60s. We’d just been literally talking about his influence. And then, this morning . . . it’s incredibly sad.”
Mark Ronson was in the celebrity section: As “Starman” was playing on the PA, we asked for his thoughts. He said: “Actually I had this friend, who died six—no nine—years ago now. And we played ‘Starman’ at his funeral. That has nothing to do with anything you just asked me, but I just thought about it. Yes, it does feel pretty weird to be at a fashion show. Pretty much he probably affects everybody—so much in music, so much in art, so much in fashion. I don’t have an eloquent way to put it. It’s sad. But then, his music will be affecting generations. It has already affected three generations—his, to mine, to the next—and it will be that way I’m sure for hundreds of years.”
So Bowie was very much in the room. And while it was a little weird to be at a fashion show, it seemed apposite too. Kind of right. Beneath the Bowie, this collection was notable for both its depth and (seeming) simplicity: Depending on your perspective, it was either a collection without a concept or a collection whose concept was so broadly all-encompassing that it defied the categorization.
The meat and potatoes of it, in short, was outerwear. Of almost every kind. And—via the Burberry archives—drawn from every vintage. In 1856, the year Burberry was founded, Queen Victoria watched a fleet review at which the hundreds of craft comprising the then-largest navy in world—from ironclads to gunboats—sailed past for her delectation. This show was a fleet review of Burberry outerwear: The flotilla included red-flashed greatcoats, checked topcoats, military capes, several dreamily felted duffle coats, Arctic parkas, fishtail parkas, multiple trenches—of course—truckers, bombers, blousons, piuminos, furs, reverse-shearling aviators, and a few tailored jackets for good measure. The key piece, though, seemed to be the track top—sometimes half-zipped, sometimes full—which was used once or twice as outerwear but more often as the connective membrane between all the genres of and subgenres of the coat worn above them. White zippered, and with a loose long collar that allowed for both pragmatic and aesthetic protection of the body, the Burberry variation on the generic late-’70s nylon track top provided a blank space—which later sparkled in sequin applications—upon which to present the clothes above. Unless below suiting, the pants were most often military-track hybrids, narrow and light, often with cavalry flashes down the leg. These were worn above dark, simple sneakers with rubber nodules on the toe and contra-color sliver foam soles, or loafers.
If there was a unifying theme, it was Unifying. Last November Burberry announced that 2016 is the year it merges all of its lines—Prorsum, London, and Brit. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” was the quote on the press notes. Here those traditional criteria for an auspicious wedding were met by the archive coats, a new satchel bag, the track tops, and a blue-bodied, red-flashed peacoat, respectively. “It’s about standing for something and being proud of who you are,” said Bailey, “saying that this is your personality, with everything working together in a world that’s changing quite dramatically.”
