Sept. 23, 2025

Burberry‘s Return
to the Skinny Cut

WORDS ANDERS CHRISTIAN MADSEN

BURBERRY

Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Burberry Spring/Summer 2026 show.

Over the last year, Burberry has been regrouping and leaning into what it historically does best: the pragmatic British wardrobe and the culture that shapes it. For Daniel Lee, who often sees things from unexpected angles, the familiarity of that territory posed an interesting challenge in a runway context. How do you make that feel new? The show opened with a cropped 1960s trench coat cut in lacquered plaid. By look four, a boy in a three-button mod suit cemented the agenda: in a world of oversized silhouettes, Lee was going skinny.

He’d spent the summer embracing British festival culture, from Glastonbury to the Oasis reunion tour. It inspired a study of the nation’s contributions to music and the subcultures they spurred. “When we started looking at The Beatles’ references, we thought, wow, this feels really new again after everything being so oversized,” Lee explained backstage, referring to his slender line. “It’s harder to do neater things because as soon as you see a model walking in something smaller, it has less impact. So, we really challenged ourselves to try and celebrate a different silhouette than what’s been around.” It didn’t lack impact.

BURBERRY

BURBERRY

BURBERRY

Lee filled in his skinny silhouette with mod and hippie sentiments, elevating a soulful retro sensibility with a louche touch. Plaids and denim were lacquered (“Burberry is about waterproof, so we thought, what else can we waterproof?”), leather coats had rustic stitching around the edges, colored suits were paled as if bleached by the sun, and glistening snakeskin patterns on coats and boots added glamour. Combined, it came across a lot like a complete wardrobe in the Burberry tradition of Christopher Bailey. Like his shows, this one was staged in a tent not far from Kensington Palace. It felt like home.

Another designer known for crafting a complete wardrobe is Hedi Slimane, who was almost singlehandedly keeping the slimline torch burning amid the oversized craze of the last decade. Since he left Celine in October last year, the customer base to which he caters has been left orphaned. While no one can replace Slimane, his absence leaves a gap in the market that Burberry could viably – and desirably – claim a piece of. After all, this house hails from the nation that spawned the subcultures that popularised the lean silhouette, as illustrated by Lee on Monday evening in Kensington Palace Gardens.

The energy that underpins that feeling is authenticity, on Burberry’s part but also on a more personal level for Lee. He played Black Sabbath throughout the show in homage to Ozzy Osbourne who died in July, and as nod to his own British upbringing. “That’s something very personal to me. They were one of my dad’s favorite bands. He’s big into Harley Davidson so I grew up around that culture, listening to Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Metallica,” he reminisced. “The first music festival I ever went to was Reading where System of a Down were headlining. That was my first experience of music culture.”