Burberry? Let’s just forget our ’summer’

By Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous

Where do you get your inspiration from? Do you seek it in the woods, as dappled sunlight fights a silent battle through the leafy canopy? Or perhaps in the dying embers of sunset, as the molten lightshow dips disconsolately into the horizon?

Or even in the darkness, as the cloak of anonymity embraces you like a long-lost relative?

Hmm, me neither.

But for some creative types, whether it be the flamboyant toff who sports nothing other than a smoking jacket and reindeer moccasins or the socially inept hermit who perches horn-rimmed spectacles on the end of a rampantly ugly nose, inspiration always appears in the most obscure places.

Take our “summer” (I’ve put the word in inverted commas given that the last couple of “summers” may flout Trades Description rules). Week after week of unbridled, serotonin-sapping misery; pensioners sat in rowing boats in their living rooms; crops swimming under four feet of water; centuries’ old bridges collapsing into the torrent.

For everyone who has lived through this miserable torment, summer ‘07 and ‘08 shall be forever wiped from the memory, banishing all talk of clean-up operations, impassable roads and financial disaster, while also removing images of rescue operations and TV crews and weathermen with stupid grins.

Unfortunately, while it’s been raining all summer, it’s now raining in your wardrobe. For the British weather has become so seminal that it’s winning admirers. Indeed, look closely at Burberry’s latest collection and you will see it has been inspired by the heartache and pain brought to earth by the elements.

Of course, the psychophantic fashion pack see nothing but dewey-eyed romance in the interminable rain and the cloying mud. The rest of us see it for what it is - interminable rain and cloying mud.

Here’s what one had to say: “Burberry’s creative director Christopher Bailey, who keeps a house on the Yorkshire moors, went for posh, yet very hip, pastoral this season with muddied hews and weather beaten finishes in easily the coolest display of fashion we’ve seen in anywhere so far.

“Many models wore plaid rain caps as they trudged down the catwalk, made of country farmhouse kitchen black slate, seemingly escaping a downpour. Half the opening looks were dip dyed as if the elements had soiled their trim, or weathered their finish to a fine dreamy patina.

“As ever, Bailey whipped up some great accessories, from clunky, African wood bracelets - the better to withstand a tractor ride - to a great series of lovingly worn and faded leather outback rider bags.

“But this might just prove to be a clever formula to make the cash register ring; downbeat, yet clever clothes, in a depressed economy. And in synch with the climate - the UK just had the wettest summer in living memory.”

My how we laughed.

Note how it reports that the models ‘trudged’ down the catwalk.

“Remember the delays in single farm payment,” no doubt an organiser screamed from the wings as the skeletons clad in cloth caps and filthy wellies took their turn in the spotlight.

“Don’t forget you can’t feed your kids,” hollered another, as Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ piped through the auditorium.

“Come on, frown people,” added the make-up artist, desperate mixing a colour palette to create sallow cheeks and leaden eyes.

Burberry’s collection simply underlines that the life of a designer is myopically out of touch with society. Cocooned in vanity and ego, they pick the juicy affectations of life while burying any hint of reality.

What next? A collection which takes inspiration from the human catastrophe in Darfur, with models crawling down the catwalk in filthy rags pretending to look for food? Or maybe they could draw inspiration from the conflict in Afghanistan, only this time put soldiers and the insurgents side-by-side on the runway to show how fashion can solve the world’s ills?

Burberry may well have underlined its British credentials with this thunderous collection which pays homage to the ’summer’. Just a shame that the rest of us have been trying to forget it.