We published a news story early this morning that looked at the increase in sales at Burberry, particularly in the US. While my esteemed colleague and counterpart Meghan went through numbers and all the boring details explaining how Burberry managed to increase sales in the US, I have the luxury of looking qualitatively at how they pulled off the feat. Quite simply, Christopher Bailey is a genius.
He’s not reinventing the wheel over at Burberry creating outlandish pieces that serve little purpose from season to season. What you have at Burberry is quite simply a never ending story of fashion that works not from season to season, but overall. You’re literally talking about wearing a trench from 10 years ago that works even with today’s fashion. Which leads to the thought that whatever is timeless in fashion can and will continue to sell.
The article notes that sales have increased across the board (with the exception of Spain), and so naturally there’s more than just the timeless quality of Bailey’s work. There’s marketing, distribution and all that other stuff that cooks within the success recipe. So in this sense cause really does = effect. Timeless clothing means higher sales. Make no mistake: the base ingredient is timeless fashion. I can easily rattle off the names of designers that sell trendy items that won’t last into the next season, but rattling off the timeless fashion houses like Burberry is an exercise in futility. Can you name a couple of timeless designers?