I’m willing myself, in a cynical, Rita Skeeter kind of way, to dislike Christopher Bailey. The 34-year-old design wunderkind who has overseen the startling reinvention of the Burberry brand – all six lines, with sales of £164 million – has press cuttings so glowing they are practically radioactive. Even Tom Ford, for whom Bailey worked for six years, didn’t get such amazing press; there has to be a catch.
On my way to the interview, as luck would have it, a fashion-literate London cabbie and I discuss his own particular passion for Missoni sweaters and move on to Burberry as their giant HQ on the Haymarket in London heaves into view. “If you could get a word across we’d be grateful, love,” says the cabbie. “Tell ‘im we can’t afford Burberry.” I try this concept out on Bailey as we sit down in the minimalist office tucked in to the side of his messy design atelier, which stretches across the top of the vast former department store. Bailey grins as if he’s heard the complaint before.
“I love this,” he says. “I’m actually hugely conscious of the price thing. Obviously Prorsum [the designer line] is fashion-driven, so it’s in line with other fashion brands” – think Prada and Marni – “but Burberry London and the other brands are price-sensitive.” There’s an element of irony underlying Bailey’s rampant success, in that the very thing that Burberry stood for – its distinctive black, tan, red and white check – was also the thing that looked for a moment as though it might sink the house completely. It was in part thanks to Bailey’s democratic approach that the company thrived, despite mass adoption by those of the chav persuasion. “I love that too,” he counters. “Burberry is not meant to be a scary brand. It’s accessible. It has history. It’s great that your average pubgoer can wear it too.”
Bailey’s charm is becoming all too obvious, but the disconcerting thing is that it seems genuine. Sitting in this sleek office at the helm of one of the fashion world’s most successful brands, he still looks like he probably did when he left Batley art school in West Yorkshire, where he studied fashion design in the late Eighties. His pale good looks and tawny, messy hair could only be English. He’s not wearing hobnailed boots but he should be, because he exudes a Billy Elliot-like naivety and an energy that is infectious.
His background is suitably working-class – his father was a carpenter, his mother a window-dresser for Marks & Spencer. “She is stylish,” he says, “but she shopped at Next and Harveys [a Halifax department store]; we couldn’t afford designer brands and I didn’t grow up knowing what Chanel was.” He fell into fashion design after a teacher at his school, Sowerby Bridge High, suggested he apply to art school. His work found its way into the fashion department and without, by his own admission, “a bloody clue” of what it was all about, he embarked on a path that would take him to study at the RCA, to design for Donna Karan in New York (“a fantastic woman”), and for Tom Ford in London (“for him I have total respect”). Then on to Burberry, where in 2001 powerhouse retailer and Burberry CEO Rose Marie Bravo was searching for someone to take over from Roberto Menichetti, whose puzzling designs were not helping sales.
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Bravo says she “just knew” that Bailey was right the moment she met him. It’s easy to see why: he reveres the brand but approaches it not with the formulaic rigour of Ford or the kooky sexuality of Karan but with the canny eye of a democratic northerner. It could be argued that it’s the mix of working-class lad, Bronx-born businesswoman (in Bravo) and the pragmatic heritage of a brand created on a platform of technical excellence (initially makers of functional sportswear) and now worn by the Queen and chavs alike that is the alchemy.
Bailey has worked with a light touch with the collections, subverting the checks into multi-colours, snipping off sleeves at elbow length, introducing pastel colours and short capes to the mackintosh line and creating sweet, slightly tousled looks on the Prorsum catwalks that play to the brand’s strengths. His spring/summer women’s wear this season, with its blousy prints, metallic jackets and slinky dresses, was received rapturously. We meet just before he boards a plane for his Milan menswear show – menswear being a particular strength, not just because he is a man but because, as one politically incorrect but apposite fan says, “Burberry menswear isn’t effeminate, it’s clever and cool. It’s even a bit blokey.”
Blokey is not a word you might use to describe Bailey, but then again, in a grounded, down-to-earth kind of way you might. He is inspired by nature (“I love geology”), by art (Hockney, Freud, Emin), architecture (Gehry and Van der Rohe), and music (The Streets, Nina Simone), but not by one individual. “I don’t have a muse; it’s not me and it’s not that kind of moment in fashion,” he says. “People don’t want to look like one person, they want to look like individuals.” Individuals inspire him, and he is social, though he never appears on the party pages. He lives with his partner, and grew up with his best friend, an accountant who lives in New York. He still has a lot of friends and a home “up North”, as well as other friends who are starry. Will he name names? He will, off the record. It’s an impressive list but not long. “I’m not the sort for lots of friends,” he says; those he has are held together “by a certain sort of thread. It’s not about class or money or education or status. All my friends are down-to-earth and positive. I can’t bear angst.” Overseeing the image of Burberry is a tall order. The company’s face is Kate Moss – “it goes without saying: she’s a style icon” – the photographer is Mario Testino and the art director Fabien Baron. That’s a lot of talent and egos to contain but Bailey is unfazed. “I work with great people, it’s a great job – if you can even call it that, it’s so enjoyable.” The striking, sexy images have been a major building block in the brand’s reinvention. Tailoring is also one of the company’s greatest strengths. Fortuitously, it is Bailey’s, too. He says he learnt how to cut, tailor and understand the body not from the über-designers he has worked for but by working early on for a wedding dress company called Beverly Summers, with stores in Harrogate and Covent Garden. “I made the coffee, cut the patterns, did fittings, drove the delivery van,” he says, looking nostalgic. “In this way I understood the insecurities women have, the preconceptions about their bodies, the way they want things to fit.” Bailey says the Burberry woman has spirit – it shows in the way the clothes swing and sway on the runway, falling deftly from hips or chests, often with satiny detailing or exquisite nips and tucks. “It’s a slightly thrown together, dishevelled elegance. It’s very English.”
The very English approach is working well overseas. Burberry sales in Asia account for more than 26 per cent of sales, in the US they are 23 per cent. There are successful lines of sunglasses, swimwear, bags and shoes to add to the six clothing lines. Last year, the Burberry Brit fragrance for women won a FIFI, the fragrance industry’s Oscar, and Burberry Brit for men is a bestseller. Everyone from Hilary Swank to Nicole Kidman has been photographed wearing Burberry. Bailey says he’s never had a plan for his career but concedes it was helped by working for Karan and Ford, “not just because of the design side, but because I learnt you must believe in yourself and have passion for what you do”. His approach to a career trajectory that moves ever upwards is pragmatic. “I believe our path is set for us, no matter what we do: what will be will be.” He hints mischievously at the company’s plans after the recent announcement of a £50 million investment plan. “We are still very much at the beginning of defining what Burberry is.”
For the moment, though, the likeable, self-effacing boy from Halifax, who once wanted to be a vet and is now the architect of one of the greatest fashion makeovers ever, is in philosophical mood. “Values,” he says, “are what it’s all about. In fashion and in life.”