Burberry had something most fashion labels would envy: a pattern that could identify it without anyone reading the name. Yet that familiarity created a difficult question. What should the check mean when it appeared on many kinds of products, made and sold through different parts of a global business?
The tempting version of the comeback story is visual. A famous pattern became too familiar, so a new leadership team made the clothes desirable again. There is truth in the importance of presentation. But look behind the clothes and the story becomes more interesting. Burberry was also changing the machinery that decided what those clothes would be.
The check did not need a new name. The company needed a clearer relationship between its heritage, its designs and the many places where customers encountered them.
The pattern began inside the coat
Burberry’s own history dates the business to Thomas Burberry’s shop in Basingstoke in 1856. Its account centres on clothing for the weather, rather than a decorative pattern. The company’s chronology records his development of gabardine in 1879 and its patent in 1888. Burberry’s published history
The check came later. According to the brand’s heritage account, it lined raincoats in the 1920s. The same account describes a Paris-store buyer using the lining to cover luggage and an umbrella for a presentation in 1967; the check scarf followed in the 1970s. These are the company’s descriptions of its own heritage. The Burberry Check
That movement matters. A lining is discovered within an object. A scarf or bag displays its pattern to people who may never see the coat. The identifying feature can travel independently of the product that first gave it a home.
There is an attraction in that freedom. Someone can recognise the family resemblance across very different objects. There is also a tension. Recognition alone cannot tell them whether the objects belong to a coherent collection, or simply carry the same pattern.
The check made that tension unusually visible. It was a small piece of design carrying a large amount of identity.
A revival had already happened
The next chapter should not begin with a claim that Angela Ahrendts found a dead business in 2006. Rose Marie Bravo’s earlier leadership belongs in the story too.
Burberry’s 2004/05 report records turnover of £715.5 million and 157 directly operated stores, concessions and outlets at the year end. Its five-year table shows turnover rising from £427.8 million in 2001. These are reported figures, not a controlled test of what the check caused. They show why an account of instant rescue from commercial oblivion is too simple. Annual Report 2004/05, segment analysis and five-year summary
A growing company can still have a problem with how its identity is being used. Revenue and desirability are related, but they are not interchangeable measures. Nor does a large store network guarantee that every part of the range feels as though it belongs to the same fashion house.
This makes the handover more compelling than a simple before-and-after transformation. The incoming team inherited achievements as well as problems. It had to decide what to preserve, what to make more consistent and where further growth should come from.
One visible success could also make the next decision harder. If people already recognised the check, abandoning it would mean giving up something valuable. Repeating it without judgement could make its familiarity less useful. The answer had to involve more than choosing between keeping and removing a pattern.
When one name covers many versions
Ahrendts joined the company in January 2006 and became chief executive on 1 July that year. The distinction between joining and taking the chief-executive role is recorded in the contemporary annual report. Annual Report 2006/07
In a 2008 address reported by Knowledge at Wharton, she described a business that had operated through distributors, wholesale, retail and licensing without being fully integrated. She presented the check as “overexposed, underappreciated and undervalued”. Her response included giving Christopher Bailey wider brand responsibility and connecting the organisation more closely. This is her explanation of the changes, reported from her conference address. Knowledge at Wharton, 20 November 2008
A licence lets another business use a brand under agreed terms. It can extend a name into a product category without the brand owner performing every task itself. A distributor can bring local knowledge and access. These arrangements are not inherently a sign of failure.
But a shared name does not, by itself, create a shared design decision. A collection can look different from place to place because different people have different expectations about its audience, price position and appearance. Each decision can seem reasonable within its own market while the total becomes difficult to describe.
That is why the distinction between recognition and coherence is important here. A customer might identify the label easily and still receive conflicting messages about what kind of label it was. The name was familiar; the relationship between its expressions needed attention.
The less visible part of a fashion turnaround
The 2006/07 report set out a plan to bring product design together in London under the creative director, alongside closer organisational and supply-chain integration. It also identified overexposure of the check as a risk. Those decisions sit in a document that discusses both what customers see and the systems they do not. Annual Report 2006/07, strategy and risks sections
The report makes the change concrete: category-specific design teams were physically brought together, the number of styles within each collection was reduced, and the design cycle was revised to offer new merchandise monthly. Fewer styles in each collection did not mean freezing the range; the rhythm of its arrival was changing too. Annual Report 2006/07, Products section
These are decisions about what a customer can encounter together, not just what a designer can draw. Bringing category teams closer can help a coat and an accessory be considered as parts of one collection. A revised calendar affects when the collection reaches the shop. The visible presentation depends on both.
Together, those choices help explain why a turnaround can be described accurately as a change in identity without being merely a change in graphics. A label can retain its most recognisable feature while changing the organisation that gives the feature context.
It also changes how the achievement should be credited. The creative direction matters. So do the people who make it possible for a collection to arrive, be understood and be sold as intended. A memorable photograph cannot stand in for all that work.
Growth did not mean putting the pattern on less of everything
Another shortcut is to imagine the company retreating into a small range of plain coats. Its reports describe a more selective relationship between expansion and control.
The 2010/11 annual report still listed global licensing agreements in fragrance, timepieces and eyewear. It described closer management of those relationships rather than their universal abolition. Non-apparel products accounted for 40% of retail and wholesale sales that year. Accessories and licensed categories remained part of the business. Annual Report 2010/11, non-apparel development
This is a useful corrective to the idea that focus must mean making only one kind of object. A fashion house can have a clear centre without every object being identical. The harder task is deciding how the rest of the range relates to that centre.
Outerwear could supply a recognisable point of reference. An accessory could then feel connected through its material, shape, detail or presentation, rather than relying on the largest possible area of check. That is an interpretation of how a design family can work, not a claim that every customer read the collection in the same way.
A pattern can be present, absent or partly revealed. Those choices are design decisions. Whether the choice fits the collection is a larger question than how much of the surface it covers.
The numbers do not tell a one-decision story
Burberry’s 2009/10 report gives five-year revenue totals of £742.9 million for 2006 and £1,279.9 million for 2010. Its table also separates retail, wholesale and licensing. This is evidence of the scale and changing channels of the business over that period. It does not isolate the financial effect of removing check from any particular item. Annual Report 2009/10, five-year summary
The distinction protects the story from becoming a formula. The company changed several things at once, while trading in changing markets. There is no basis here for assigning all the growth to one aesthetic decision or one person.
Nor should later knowledge make the period look effortless. Wharton’s report of the 2008 address places the reorganisation against a worsening global economy. Ahrendts was discussing frequent reassessment, not announcing that a sharper identity had removed economic uncertainty.
A comeback is an account of a period, not a permanent guarantee. The interesting result is that a celebrated visual asset could be retained while the way the business worked around it changed substantially.
The check was an asset, not the whole explanation
Burberry’s story is often reduced to the danger of being too visible. Its contemporary records suggest a more demanding problem: being recognisable in many places while remaining recognisably one fashion house.
The distinction leaves room for both Bravo’s earlier growth and the changes under Ahrendts and Bailey. It allows the check to be valuable and overexposed at the same time. It also explains why bringing decisions together mattered alongside the design of the next coat or campaign.
The pattern did not become famous because of the reorganisation. Its fame was already there. What needed rebuilding was the connection between that fame and the products, places and choices carrying it.
For another story about a familiar identity being tested, read Gap’s brief 2010 logo change. The Burberry episode shows why keeping the visible symbol can still involve a substantial change behind it.
Sources and scope
This article examines the mid-2000s to early-2010s changes, not Burberry’s current financial prospects. Company reports establish dates, declared strategy and reported results; Ahrendts’ conference account explains her interpretation. The relationship between recognition and coherence is editorial analysis. No single design decision is claimed to have caused the financial outcome.