London Fashion Week: Burberry SS21

The pandemic is not over yet and we already think on how to preserve the experience for the future. Artists and creatives started to create and translate, in their own art, what the reclusion, the distance and the laziness, have signified for them. This is, after all, a deeply human need, to make the past visible, to create a storytelling around the events in order for them to be remembered by future generations, to be understood. Spring 2021 Ready to Wear collection by Burberry is excatly this kind of artistic outcome: Tisci’s sincere, complex and sublime witness, his work is the translation of feelings and emotions into garments and accessories. The final result belongs to us all. 

The collection works on different level of interpretation. Freedom and fear, first of all, always alternating. Tisci admired that to spend time with his family during the lockdown was both a blessing and a destabilizing feeling. The same alternation can be found in the theme of the collection, the sea (despite the runway being literally a path in the wood, just outside London). The sea that stands in front of us, endless and full of hope, but also intimidating. Shark is a figure Tisci brings along for quite some time and it is present here as well. Together with it the mermaid, printed on dresses and tops but also reflected in the glittering looks at the very end. It is as well a quite ambiguous creature. 

Every look is dense and impactful. Prints are pop, colours alternate: very intense blue, green, orange and then white. There are Burberry’s signature trenches of course, but deeply changed by fabrics’ patchwork (cotton and leather and denim). Cuts give movement too. A sweet and spooky symphony grow from Tisci’s dark backdrop, while the forrest cracks and Anne Imhof sings, for us watching, for models on the runway and also for herself. 

Cover image courtesy: Burberry