BURBERRY: ELITE MEETS STREET
Trading figures for Burberry, just out, show Britain’s biggest luxury brand is doing OK despite the wider economic woes. Even so, the company’s had a tricky few years. In the late 90s, Burberry moved to take its own share of the burgeoning market for designer labels. Advertising spend increased and its trademark check, once tucked away discretely in the linings of its raincoats, was applied to everything from socks to handbags. However, Burberry was quickly taken up by a demographic it would have preferred to avoid. Another core British brand, the football hooligan, claimed the label for itself. In 2004, some anxious pub landlords even barred those dressed in Burberry from their premises.
BRITAIN’S URBAN WORKING CLASSES AND YOUTH CULTURES IDENTIFY THEMSELVES THROUGH BRANDING
But then nothing is new. Since at least the late 1960s, Britain’s urban working classes and youth cultures have largely identified themselves and each other through the brands they favour. It’s every much a part of the country’s famous street style as more celebrated and ‘organic’ strands like punk and new romantic. Forty years ago, Ben Sherman shirts, Dr Martens boots and Crombie coats were de rigueur for the first skinheads. Since then, successive UK youth cultures and scenes have each made individual brands, even specific designs, key to their own signature looks. Fred Perry, Levi’s, Lacoste, Pringle, Aquascutum, Fila, Diadora, Kickers and Adidas are just some of the international names to have been co-opted by aspiring adolescents from the council estates of London, Liverpool, Manchester and beyond. In the late 1980s, some football ‘firms’ even donned Miami Vice-style Armani for their Saturday afternoon shenanigans.
I’ve seen it argued that the 90s acid house scene, which cared little for clothes, and the homogenising power of global fashion trends, have helped defuse British street style, historically the hotbed for so many new looks. That in these post-modern days, everyone’s out to dress uniquely, ensuring no new fashion cult ever wins enough adherents to break through. But Burberry’s close encounter of the ‘chav’ kind suggests to me that, back on Britain’s streets, kids are still using clothes and labels to show they belong.
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by Yeowatzup