Burberry can boast an impressive list of collections, including: Burberry Prorsum, Thomas Burberry, Burberry London, Burberry Golf, Burberry House, Burberry Timepiece (watches to the rest of us) and Burberry Eyewear – phew! Impressive! However, scratch the glossy checkered surface and an all too different picture emerges; a new world-order which must send shivers down the spine of every major brand.
Burberry’s once pre-eminent status as a brand of the rich and powerful has been completely undermined over the past few years as a new breed of customer or pseudo-customer (a parenthesis is necessary to clarify pseudo-customer — this term denotes an individual who purchases a counterfeit [usually online] at a drastically reduced price in an attempt to glean the associated kudos of the brand), drags the once might brand through the lager and blood-stained gutter now so commonly associated with Burberry clad lads and ladettes, colloquially referred to as “Chavs”. Burberry must be devastated by this new found infamy and wonder whether they will ever fully rid themselves of this damaging stigma. Some fashion commentators actually believe Burberry is partly to blame for this situation — they point to the decision to produce Burberry baseball cap as an open invitation to a new strata of customer which was bound to instigate negative consequences; the traditional Burberry customer would never consider buying a baseball cap – ergo, Burberry must accept some of the onus for the current stigma. That aside, other brands are experiencing the “burberry-effect” and are desperately seeking a way to avoid this new world-order which turns the class strata on its head or at the very least dissolves the class system altogether.
Perhaps we’re all missing the point and Burberry are in fact at the vanguard of a secretive egalitarian mission to integrate toff and chav into a new inclusive integrated world-order where Dave and Rupert or Tracy and Camilla can live in peace and the social divide is bridge in red, camel, black and white check.
Burberry as a brand still holds a lot of kudos amongst it’s customers, after all the quality and heritage can never be taken away but the check design is now dead as a symbol of style, time to come up with a new symbol, price it out of the chav market and guard the brand from the counterfeiters with as much zeal as they can muster.