{"id":58806,"date":"2017-11-06T18:03:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T17:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=58806"},"modified":"2017-11-06T18:03:34","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T17:03:34","slug":"christopher-bailey-burberry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/christopher-bailey-burberry\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Times Christopher Bailey's Burberry Was Ahead of the Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nIt was recently announced that Christopher Bailey, the chief creative officer at Burberry, would be leaving the brand in March 2018. Even in the midst of fashion\u2019s \u201cgame of musical chairs\u201d<\/a>, it\u2019s impossible to imagine the heritage British brand with no Bailey at the helm. After all, it was Bailey’s arrival at Burberry 2001 which heralded the brand’s transformation into the luxury powerhouse that it is today. During his 16 years at Burberry, he re-invented its signature checks<\/a>, the famous knits (\u201chave to smell of sheep\u201d, Bailey insisted), led Burberry into the digital age and drew crowds of influencers to his shows. <\/span>
\nThe reason for his planned exit is the recent slowdown in revenues. For the past couple of seasons, Burberry has been underperforming in several key markets, USA and Hong Kong included. After years of continuous growth, this is Bailey\u2019s first slump. We at Sleek, however,\u00a0<\/span>prefer to remember Bailey’s successes at Burberry, of which there were many<\/span>. Below are five times when Bailey put Burberry at the cutting edge of the fashion industry.<\/span>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BaYef15gjxj\/?taken-by=burberry<\/p>\n

1. Embracing the Digital<\/span><\/h2>\n

Burberry was an early adopted of social media, and one of the first brands to truly realise that the internet was a revolutionary tool in the fashion industry. This is evident from Burberry’s blog, Art of the Trench, which the brand released in 2009. Directed at a younger, digital-savvy audience, the blog featured pictures of people wearing those iconic Burberry trench-coats. The website was conceived as a classic street-style blog, with none other than Scott Schuman of <\/span>The Sartorialist<\/span><\/i> behind the camera. Two years later, Burberry allowed its fans backstage with the Tweetwalk, a Twitter account that featured pictures from backstage. Burberry\u2019s Art of Trench and Tweetwalk were both precursors to the ubiquity of online marketing today.\u00a0<\/span>
\nChristopher Bailey\u2019s Burberry also was one of the first brands to own a Snapchat account, and the first luxury brand to run a native ad on Snapchat’s Discover channel. <\/a>In 2016, the brand ran a Discover channel for 24 hours, to promote its men\u2019s fragrance Mr. Burberry. The campaign came with the usual Burberry flair: the Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen shot a short film for it, and Benjamin Clementine composed the soundtrack. Tapping high-profile creatives for a social media campaign is yet another thing Bailey pioneered.<\/span>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BZVsFXpgzOV\/?taken-by=burberry<\/p>\n

3. One of the First Openly Gay Top Executives in Britain<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bailey\u2019s appointment as Burberry\u2019s CEO in 2014 also made him one of the first openly gay executives on the FTSE 100 list<\/a>. In a recent interview with Paper Magazine, the designer said that not even the conservative atmosphere of corporate world made him feel uncomfortable about being who he was. \u201cI gave a Q&A and a bit of a talk at a bank recently that wanted to do something for the LGBT audience and the employees that they had,\u201d \u00a0Bailey said. \u201cIt was there that I suddenly realized that I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin, even in Yorkshire, where it’s a place where being gay when I was growing up wasn’t something that was particularly accepted or something that you would talk about. I was always fairly confident about who I was and never really saw it as an issue\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>
\nEven though Bailey makes it sound casual, one might imagine that being an openly gay person among straight men \u2013 and top fashion executives normally are straight men \u2013 might be not that easy.
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BZT7ZDhAElK\/?taken-by=burberry<\/p>\n

4. Shoppable Runway Shows<\/span><\/h2>\n

In 2015, when the \u201csee now buy now\u201d controversy unfolded, Burberry became the first British brand (and, again, one of the first fashion brands in the world) to adopt the questionable mode<\/a>l. In a recent interview with Elle, Bailey defended the questionable model: \u201cI’ve yet to meet somebody who tells me, ‘I wouldn’t want it now; I want to wait. It’s much more intriguing’\u201d. Two years after the SNBN scheme was implemented for the first time, sceptics still doubt its merits, with French couture houses remaining among the most sceptical. But for Burberry, it seems to work. Clicks on the website increase tremendously as new collections drop, and the sales of new outerwear surge. Regardless of your own feelings towards SNBN, it’s hard to deny that it made Burberry\u2019s investors happy.<\/span>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BZJGRdQgI3r\/?taken-by=burberry<\/p>\n

5. Merging Menswear and Womenswear <\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cOut is the concept of showing men and women\u2019s clothes separately, recognising that in a transgender world, sexual fluidity is a reality for fashion,\u201d rejoiced<\/a> the inimitable Suzy Menkes, Bailey\u2019s longtime fan in 2016. Coinciding with the launch of \u201csee now buy now\u201d, Burberry decided to merge their womenswear and menswear. The advantages of the move are clear: first, the enormous costs of staging the shows separately are cut. Second, by showing the two lines together, brands create a more consistent image. Third, Bailey always set Burberry apart by considering menswear and womenswear to be equally important. In showcasing his menswear collections during the womenswear season \u2014 which is normally more widely publicised \u2014 he drew attention to them. And in doing so was quite in line with the current rise of men\u2019s fashion.<\/span>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BZJQ9__AYvj\/?hl=en&taken-by=burberry
\nOnly time will tell what Bailey will do after Burberry.<\/span>\u00a0Will he launch his own brand? Will he occupy a high-ranking position at some luxury brand? Will he take a break from designing, a la Phoebe Philo? And, speaking of Philo, could the rumours of her exit from C\u00e9line precede the news of an appointment at Burberry? The fashion world, where intrigues never cease, has us spellbound with anticipation yet again…<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Bailey will be stepping down as Burberry’s Creative Chief in March 2018. To mark what truly is the end of an era we are looking at the five moments when he was ahead of the fashion industry.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[2065,2066,21,463,9572,9573],"class_list":["post-58806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion","tag-burberry","tag-christopher-bailey","tag-fashion","tag-london-fashion-week","tag-nova-check","tag-tartan"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n5 Times Christopher Bailey's Burberry Was Ahead of the Curve 5 Times Christopher Bailey's Burberry Was Ahead of the Curve<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/christopher-bailey-burberry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Times Christopher Bailey's Burberry Was Ahead of the Curve 5 Times Christopher Bailey's Burberry Was Ahead of the Curve\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christopher Bailey will be stepping down as Burberry's Creative Chief in March 2018. 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