A Down-to-Earth Briton on a Stage of His Own
By CATHY HORYN
Published: June 27, 2004
Christopher Bailey, the Burberry designer, looks as if he has swallowed a gherkin. "That's the second question I'm always asked, `Who's your muse?' " Mr. Bailey said as he crossed Green Park, where sunbathers were lolling in the grass and the smell of marijuana floated in the air. "I mean, it's the weirdest question. What is that?" He frowned. "It's one person that you pick out from a crowd who's supposed to signify everything that for you is changing in the world. It's impossible. But a lot of people don't want to hear that. `Of course you have a muse.' "
The first question that Christopher Bailey is always asked is, Where do you live in London? "It's wild," he said. "I tell people I live on Hyde Park, and they're, like. . . ." Gherkin face. He knows what they're thinking: Complete sap. Drudge. See, he said, they expect someone who works for a company that featured Kate Moss wearing a bikini in its ads, that last year had sales of $1.2 billion, to live among the celebs in Primrose Hill or Notting Hill. "It's wild," he said, shaking his head.
Mr. Bailey, who will present his spring 2005 men's collection today in Milan, is not the most influential designer in the world. That would be Marc Jacobs. But unlike Mr. Jacobs, who has to point out after a show that a frilly mommy dress was inspired by Rachel Feinstein, the hip artist, Mr. Bailey doesn't have to explain anything. He lives in Piccadilly, he doesn't have a muse and he designs clothes that not only helped earn Burberry record profits last year ? $167 million ? but also can't be summed up in your convenient, economy-size trend report.
You can't even say the look is British, although in his latest women's show, for fall 2004, he did have leather buttons and some see-through rain capes. Very pervy, Bridget Jones would say. But cool Britannia?
Burberry is one of the world's oldest name brands, started by Thomas Burberry in 1856, when vast parts of the globe still lay unexplored and European travelers needed something dry to wear. Amundsen wore Burberry to the South Pole. Alcock and Brown wore Burberry to cross the Atlantic. Thousands of British soldiers wore Burberry at Passendale and the Somme. By the time Audrey Hepburn wore a Burberry trench coat in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961, there was nothing left to discover except the way to the nearest mall. Burberry's grandeur had been leached out of it. And all that remained for the next 35 years, until Rose Marie Bravo, the American retail executive, took over, was to sell the Britishness of Burberry, without real content, as if it were a paper Union Jack in a Piccadilly souvenir stall.
Mr. Bailey's exceptional gift as a designer, one he has in common with Hedi Slimane, the men's designer at Dior, is to recognize that for clothes to look cool today they can't be lumbered with references (never mind logos or themes). They have to look natural ? "how girls dress when they come out of the house," as Ms. Bravo said. There is a show currently at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia called "The Big Nothing," which Michael Kimmelman just wrote about in The Times. And it is no joke to say that both Mr. Bailey and Mr. Slimane ? unlike the postmodernists of the Prada and Jacobs school ? strive for a similar effect in their clothes. Zero. Zip. Nothing.
This is not to say that their clothes are boring ? far from it. But a girl stepping out of her house in a silver lame wrap dress from Mr. Bailey's fall collection, with a slight droop in it and a blue cardigan tossed over it, isn't exactly barking for attention, either. Though she is just interesting enough to demand a second look.
"This sounds silly to say, but our challenge at Burberry is to make something that doesn't look designer," Mr. Bailey said. "And it's got nothing to do with the money aspect of fashion. There's almost a crassness to something being typically designer."
Mr. Bailey's use of Burberry's heritage has also been thoughtful. His predecessor, Roberto Menichetti, managed to design clothes that had no relation to the past and, equally, no relevancy for today. "Menichetti was doing Menichetti," Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ, said. Mr. Bailey, on the other hand, correctly perceived that Burberry's history was entwined with England's. This is a nation, after all, that saw the dream of empire carried all the way to Mecca by Richard Burton, the explorer, only to see it punctured, a century later, by John Lydon, the Sex Pistol. You can't restore dented brass with more polish. As Sarah Mower, a London fashion journalist, said, "I think Christopher's done a great thing by looking at the icons, like the trench, and just bringing it all down."
It probably helps that Mr. Bailey, 33, is British, from West Yorkshire. "You know what I love?" said Mr. Bailey, whose father is a carpenter and whose mother used to be the head of visual display at Marks & Spencer. "My family just has no interest in what I do. You can tell them that you've met the Queen of England, and they're like, `Right, whatcha want for your dinner?' That's very Yorkshire. You are who you are."
For Burberry, it helps even more that Mr. Bailey spent six years at Gucci, designing the women's collections under Tom Ford. "I've been very impressed by Gucci training ? the rigor, the ability to span all the different product categories," said Ms. Bravo, who learned of Mr. Bailey through a friend and contacted him, around 2001, just as he was thinking of leaving Gucci. In conversations about Beaton and Hockney, she saw a sensibility that she loved ? and soon discovered, happily, that his modest demeanor contained northern flint. "I realized he wasn't going to be any pushover," she said.
Mr. Bailey had come to Mr. Ford's attention after two years at the Royal College of Art and a year in Donna Karan's studio in New York. "I remember my interview with Tom," Mr. Bailey said. "He had a shirt unbuttoned down to here, all black. A big gold Gucci belt buckle. In an empty room with two chairs, no table. We just sat opposite each other ? Tom, with his shirt unbuttoned down to here, and me, this scrawny English boy. He was just charming ? that's the only word. He said: `You can live where you want. You want to stay in New York? That's fine. You want an apartment in Milan? We'll organize one. What about London? Do you like London?' I think it was about Tom wanting to come across as very open-minded. And I think he believed in it. It wasn't a fake attitude."
Nonetheless, at Burberry, Mr. Bailey presents a different attitude, one reflected in the coolness of the clothes. It's not that he doesn't talk. "He can talk the tail off a donkey," said a London fashion editor, adding, after a pause, "In our world, we often take people at their own estimation, don't we? Christopher is not doing the big talk. His respect is for the brand first."
Mr. Bailey is aware that Burberry's runway collections, under the unfortunately named Prorsum label, have not related to the brand's commercial line or its advertising image ? and retailers say that's a problem. Mr. Bailey suggests that consumers will see a change with the new fall ads, which feature the English actor Hugh Dancy and the models Stella Tennant and Karen Elson. And though he doesn't say it himself, they will for the first time emphasize the rightness of the clothes.
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