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APPARENTLY Christopher Bailey isn’t looking forward to much of a summer next year – and after his Burberry Prorsum show in a transparent marquee in Kensington Gardens, we’re all hoping the sun will stay away too.

Cara Delevingne opened, followed by Jourdan Dunn – both of them in shades of dark plum, bronze and forest green, a palette that was as rich as it was wintery. Skirts with high, tight waists that softly tuliped to mid-calf were teamed with form-fitting, nubbly tops of striped crocheted wooden beads. Woven raffia, in stripes of mustard and navy or plum and black, made chevrons of super slim, high-waisted pencil skirts under cropped, hardy cotton Parkas whose hoods were trimmed in more bulging, spiky raffia.

Multi-coloured peaked caps, in the same woven natural fabrics, with pompoms on top – led a keen accessories story that will make wedge heels with multi-coloured, wooden beaded ankle straps and huge, roomy bags carrying similar heavy embellishment the source of more Burberry millions next season. Gold-edged evening bags were the perfect size for an iPad too – no less than we’d expect from a house which dines out on its ability to embrace all things digital before anyone else has had time to open an email account.

This was one of Britain’s proudest and most successful heritage brands paying homage to all things natural. More wooden beads adored the neckline and shoulders of slash necked cotton tops or easy blue cardis, silk shirt dresses were languidly sexy in mustard or brown, and then an African influence emerged in cotton draped dresses in graphic prints of orange and white, black and green or yellow and purple. Wound around the body, sometimes tied between the breasts, they were ornate sarongs that allowed for far more room within than a Burberry catwalk usually does. In fact this collection allowed for age as well as over-sample-size beauty more than this house has for several seasons.

The prints then took on a Seventies whirl as they smothered fabulous fitted coats encircled in a narrow belt, and then Jourdan reappeared in an eye popping turquoise leather trench – just in case we’d forgotten where we were. And Bailey reminded us again with the signature Burberry check woven into another precisely tailored raffia trench.

It was the usual starry line up: Sienna Miller (who had a tidal wave of paparazzi chasing her to her car afterwards), Tali Lennox, Denise Lewis, Olivier Theyskens, Mario Testino, Donna Air, Mary Charteris, Talullah Harlech and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were in the front row, and as autumnal leaves of bronze sequins fell from the ceiling as we left, we felt sated with fashion – if a little in need of some sun.

With thanks to Mercedes Benz.

SEE THE BURBERRY SHOW ARCHIVE

Comments

  1. nice clothes , but expencives,they are.

    k
    20 Sep 2011

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