The retailer announces it is cutting a fifth of its workforce, including 150 jobs in Wakefield, but the chief executive strikes an optimistic note
When Burberry was successful, it bottled the essence of Britishness. It is now a medium-sized player that has gone through successive changes of management, facing an increasingly volatile world while seeming uncertain of its identity. So still the essence of Britain.
The company has announced huge job losses – up to 1,700 globally, or about a fifth of its workforce, including 150 at its Castleford mill in West Yorkshire, which produces its famous trench coat – as part of a cost-cutting initiative aimed at saving £100m by 2027.
And yet in the same announcement, its chief executive, Joshua Schulman, announced a more optimistic end of year than expected, with a profitable second half offsetting losses in the first six months. Its adjusted operating profit was £26m.
Burberry’s problems began in 2016, when the company’s enormously successful creative director, Christopher Bailey, was shuffled away from the shopfloor to become presidentbefore he stepped down in 2018, being replaced by Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci.
Bailey had delivered almost two decades of glory, transforming Burberry from a reliable but dull coat maker into a style powerhouse with cultural references from the Beatles through Princess Margaret to David Hockney, rappers, actors and supermodels.
He popped the collar on the trench coat, delivering a more flattering silhouette, and pushed the signature nova check on to accessories, caps, shorts and children’s clothes. He also forged the tumultuous relationship between Burberry and the sneering-class insult “chav”.
“The so-called ‘chav’ associations did lose Burberry its cachet, but then when the brand felt like it was on the floor, Kate Moss started appearing in public wearing Burberry,” said Richard Benson, former editor of the Face. “It was that classic British thing where the interesting creativity happens on those borders of working-class and lower-middle-class culture. Kate Moss knew the time was right to be like: ‘Yeah, I’m wearing a bit of chav gear.’ That was such a British signifier. Christopher Bailey was always really secretly delighted by that.”
Tisci tore into Burberry’s heritage, splitting catwalk shows into two rooms: hyper-traditional wood panelling versus steel scaffolding, weighting the union jack in collections in what felt like a re-enactment of Brexit divisions. The share price clambered out of its turn-of-the-century doldrums and into an era of wildly volatile swings.
Erin O'Connor visits a dinner co-hosted by Burberry at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show on 20 May. Dave Benett/Getty
Tisci was trying to improve Burberry’s perceived status, quality and price, moving away from the chav label towards a more luxury-focused consumer. This strayed away from the Britishness at Burberry’s core with prices that alienated the mid-market consumer.
The company tried to turn the ship around in 2022, with a new chief executive, Jonathan Akeroyd, and the departure of Tisci, whose replacement as creative director, Bradford-born mechanic’s son Daniel Lee, initially tried to keep the cooler, haughtier, edgier direction while restoring more traditional British themes.
The post-pandemic luxury boom helped. But as the Chinese consumer stopped spending in 2024, high-end fashion suffered globally, with large global groups such as LVMH and Kering losing sales, albeit at a less dramatic rate than Burberry. There have been certain notable exceptions. Hermès, for instance, which famously refuses to sell its Birkin or Kelly bags to just anyone, selecting customers based on personal relationships rather than wealth to join an entirely unofficial six-year waiting list. In April 2025, Hermès overtook LVMH as the world’s most valuable luxury company with a market capitalisation of €247bn. Prada Group’s revenue surged for the year to March 2025, boosted by record sales at Miu Miu, which Maliha Shoaib, reporter at Vogue Business, points out, also offers book clubs and is very involved in art and politics. “That’s really what fashion should be about,” she adds.
Its slump is deeper as Britain’s luxury goods sector struggles with Brexit border controls. “The EU accounted for 42% of the UK’s luxury exports in 2017, and that fell to 32% in 2022 – a drop of nearly 24%,” according to Helen Brocklebank, chief executive of luxury goods lobbying group Walpole. “Our analysis shows that our exports to Europe are 43% lower than had they followed the trajectory of exports to the rest of the world.”
The puzzle is modernising the idea of Britishness so it’s desirable across multiple markets
Maliha Shoaib, Vogue Business
Schulman joined Burberry in July 2024 to turn the ship around – again – and unveiled the “Burberry Forward” strategy, with strict cost-cutting and a focus on British heritage. The puzzle for his plan, says Shoaib is in “modernising this idea of Britishness so that it’s desirable across multiple markets. They have these images of London, the British countryside and British celebrities, but is there a deeper cultural meaning? That’s still a question not just for Burberry, but for the whole British luxury industry.” Benson argues that Burberry should take inspiration from the likes of Miu Miu and Hermès, leaning into the sometimes wilfully inaccessible aspects of Britishness that have characterised culture and fashion’s international success.
“You need all the weirdness underneath to make it work,” he explains. “Kate Middleton gets married in an Alexander McQueen dress, and Alexander McQueen is all about bloody awful gay clubs in east London.
“Christopher Bailey’s mum was a window dresser in Marks & Spencer; he grows up in West Yorkshire among football casuals and his dream is to be in Mustique with Princess Margaret. That’s actually Britishness but I’m not sure that’s what the Chinese consumer is looking to buy.”
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