Even the guy, as it appears, is not waiting around for himself to turn the ailing Burberry around

There has been too much movement among creative directors in luxury fashion. The industry-wide game of musical chairs is, honestly, getting boring. Rumoured to be joining the fun is British designer Daniel Lee. He was hired in 2022 to turn Burberry around. That hasn’t happened. No one knows if it will. Up close in the Burberry stores, the collections have been overwhelmingly dull, nothing to go to bed and dream about. The merchandise has been, as we understand it, rather slow to move. Perhaps, Burberry’s patience is wearing thin. The intense chatter these past days is that Mr Lee is leaving the company that made the trench coat famous. Apparently, he shall be moving to Jil Sander to replace Luke and Lucie Meier.

The Meiers have helmed Jil Sander, part of OTB Group, since April 2017. That’s a respectable eight-year tenure, far longer than Mr Lee’s three at Bottega Veneta and, if he will really leave Burberry, also three there. The husband-and-wife co-designers will reportedly show their final Jil Sander collection in the upcoming Milan fashion week for women’s wear. For the first half of their time at Jil Sander, their designs enticed admiration even if they tended to lack the excitement that was pervasive at other houses. Then, possibly due to pressures to perform, made-to-sell-massively merchandise started to appear, such as the T-shirt with the brand’s logotype emblazoned across the chest or the natural-hued tote with the similar font treatment/placement. Jil Sander lost their edge when they tried to be cool.

Daniel Lee is initially admired for his stint with Phoebe Philo before he was installed at Bottega Veneta. He was at the right maison at the right time. We still think he was okay at BV, nothing to remember him by, except a particular shade of green and, perhaps, a bag called Cassette. Oh, the Berlin show, too. He was then appointed to replace Riccardo Tisci, and observers then thought that a British designer going to a British brand is as natural as fish and chips. But from his first collection, it was hard to say if he would really be able re-energise Burberry. But he had the stars and children of stars apparently in full support of his work. As the collections continue to fail to engineer even the faintest buzz, it became more persuasive that Mr Lee would need a miracle to take Burberry where his bosses wanted the brand to go. And now Jil Sander beckons. Is he the right guy? We aren’t so sure, yet.

Illustration: Just So