For Christopher Bailey, the title of his latest Burberry show, Town and Field, signified two worlds whose codes didn t match. And he wanted to try and make them. It was a kind of metaphor for Bailey s big challenge of the moment—merging Burberry s physical and digital aspects—which sounds like a much more daunting task than sticking herringbone bellows pockets on a tweed pencil skirt, one of the ways field met town in today s show. Another striking match was the brown corduroy jacket belted over a burgundy lace skirt with a substantial peplum.
The peplum and nipped waist were vintage details Bailey carried over from pre-fall, with its echoes of the thirties and forties, but where that collection tended more to the austerity of the war years, this one had a little more flounce. Another key piece was a pencil skirt with a big diagonal ruffle. It had some shimmy to counterbalance the peplum s occasional clunk. And it said "town" whatever piece of cropped outerwear it was paired with. So did floral-print faille and the tiers of fringes on Jourdan Dunn s cocktail dress. "Field" was represented by a herringbone jacket lined in shearling, a waxed cotton parka, and country critters like sparrows, owls, and doggies naïvely embroidered on shirts, and printed or appliquéd on oversize striped tees. A capacious bottle green cardigan was comfy enough for country life, but its stylish swing back gave it some urban smarts.
Such an item suggested that, Bailey s reservations aside, the division between city and country was really somewhat artificial in a collection that wove a story out of Burberry s outerwear expertise and Bailey s ongoing fascination with casually gilded youth. There s something almost melancholy about such an idea. Gilded youth will inevitably tarnish. Maybe that s why rain is a recurrent motif in Burberry-world. Today s show climaxed with an artful thundershower beating down on the transparent tent, while faux rain fell inside on the brolly-bearing models. Then again, perhaps the rain was just another metaphor, this time for all the money showering down on Burberry.
