Burberry’s Christopher Bailey on Macron, Gosha Rubchinskiy and his new CEO

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jun 12, 2017

Burberry skipped the catwalk this season in London, and instead held a breakfast inside Thomas, their cool café named after the brand’s founder, where designer Christopher Bailey was in an ebullient mood, not about Britain, but Emmanuel Macron.

“I am such a fan of Macron. He is young and I want someone who is ideological, someone with vision. Politics should start with a vision and an ideal which is what he seems to have,” said Bailey, dressed like a French worker in a faded Indigo blue cotton warehouseman’s jacket.
 
“Compared to the mess we have here in the UK right now we need a Macron,” said Bailey, indicating a widespread feeling of dismay in fashion this weekend about the hung parliament.

Bailey was just back in London after flying to St Petersburg to attend the Gosha Rubchinskiy collaborative show with Burberry - a new capsule collection of eight pieces, unveiled Saturday night at a rave-themed SS18 show inside DK Svyazi.

 
“Gosha contacted me and asked would I be game to do it. And as I love what he does I said yes. It was so un-strategic and unscheduled. It was actually effortless. We kind of communicated and he sent me references about what he loves. We went back and forth. I made some prototypes for him and sent them over. He tweaked them, and we re-tweaked them. It was all very easy. And we didn’t even see each other, it was all by technology,” enthused Bailey at the breakfast inside Burberry’s giant Regent Street flagship.
 
“And his show was just so beautiful. Inside an amazing building. Very small audience at midnight, a great crowd of people and great energy – skateboarders, musicians. But with a weird tension. All very sexually charged, yet very somber and energizing. A weird mix of things. Amazing! I loved it,” smiled Bailey.
 
Bailey will return the catwalk this September, after a summer break. The designer  and his family traditionally vacation in August in his farmhouse in Umbria.
 
“It’s more like a crèche than a holiday home,” joked Bailey the father of two young daughters.
 
In the past several years, Bailey has been both Chief Creative Officer and CEO of Burberry, but will shortly relinquish the later role.
 
Marco Gobbetti, the newly appointed CEO of Burberry, was not present. He has been part of the British team, though as executive chairman of Asia Pacific, in order to respect his previous contract with LVMH, where he was president of their star brand Céline.
 
“Marco has been with us for six months, though he only starts officially on July 5 in his new role. So, I have only four more really hard weeks,” laughed Bailey.