Christopher Bailey showed his final collection in London two days ago. It was not the swan song of swan songs

This could be the most anticipated show of the London season, but we could not have known. Christopher Bailey bowed out of Burberry with his final presentation, but it wasn’t a give-it-to-them collection. It wasn’t even a best-of throwback. No one stood up when the models strutted their stuff for the finale. Only when Mr Bailey emerged for his customary runway bow did the audience rose to its feet. The man drew a standing ovation, not the clothes.

As farewell shows go, this one was rather low on moments. Sure, people were thrilled to see the rarely-on-catwalk-these-days Cara Delevingne close the show, being goofy, but what was that she was wearing? Costume from a school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat? And what was Ms Delevingne wearing beneath that? Something to go to bed with, or to pick up the morning paper? Or was this deliberately anti-knock-out last dress, just as the show was anti-exit-with-a-bang display so that it will resound in the pages of final-show history?

This was meant to be a salute to LGBT+ youths everywhere, but it could easily be thumbs up to the “chavs” and “chavettes” (loosely, the British bengs and lians) that had once made Burberry many rungs below classy and deserving a makeover, which had led to Christopher Bailey taking the creative reigns of the 162-year-old British house. The checks that the chavs made crass were back in full glory (including those infamous caps). But it was the decidedly low-brow styling—boys and girls going about their mundane day in, possibly, east London, or even Ang Mo Kio—that made the clothes a tad too difficult to digest. Add those tired-by-now supermarket bags and you have a picture of a hipster heartland that is too much a parody to be cool and desirable.

Mr Bailey has long abandoned cool. The London cool associated with his Burberry (trench coats ruched at the shoulder), the English Rose and “Garden Girls” (full-lace tea dresses and floral prairie dresses), the ’60s edge (the autumn/winter 2011 collection inspired by Jean Shrimpton), Mr Bailey has ditched them. Like everyone else, he’s doing street, good and bad street. How else do you explain the (still) oversized Harrington jackets or Yonex-would-be-proud windbreakers? He’s also looking back at the ’90s. How else do you elucidate those multi-coloured embroidered logotype, so done-to-death by Kenzo’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, and so reminiscent of the knock-offs that once festooned the night market stalls of Bangkok’s Silom Road?

It did seem to us that Mr Bailey was doing a Marc Jacobs: He mined chav culture the way Mr Jacobs mines black culture or disco past. The hotchpotch was certainly there, so was the ’80s/’90s references and the sub-culture tags. Even the vast, somewhat bare show venue at the Dimco Building of West London was reminiscent of Mr Jacobs favourite Park Avenue Armoury. Even the music: No more live performances; just good old gay disco, courtesy of The Communards and Jimmy Somerville and a generous dash of the ever listenable Marc Almond.

Yes, they’re for the kids who have never seen and worn and dance in them before, we hear you say, but where does that leave the rest of us—we who do not want to muse over the past; who desire even the moderately new, the irreverent, the witty, the complex; we who think that, while fashion is cyclic, the cycle should take much longer to come full circle; we who think there’s too much fashion and much of it is like the other, so why bother? We understand that Burberry has to cater to those not yet bored, not yet satiated, not yet inducted, but isn’t there enough grassroots gaiety at Topshop?

Oh, the LGBT+ bit. “My final collection here at Burberry is dedicated to—and in support of—some of the best and brightest organisations supporting LGBTQ+ youths around the world,” Mr Bailey had said to the media. “There has never been a more important time to say that in our diversity lies our strength, and our creativity.” The recurrent motif in about half-a-dozen outfits was the rainbow flag/stripe. And if they seemed a little reductive in view how far gay people and their kindred kinds have come, it’s because there was something very gift shop by way of the Castro in San Francisco or the Chelsea in New York, circa 1988, in those bubble vest, coat, jacket, dress, bags, and trainers. You sort of half –aspect ‘Does Your Mother Know’ jokes emblazoned on T-shirts. We’re not sure if any of them is a good look, for gay or straight.

It could be that Mr Bailey was already in bow-out mood when assembling the collection, which, to us, was just a pastiche of stuff—a rambling thought, flashes of reflections, not the attentively conceived collection dedicated to Henry Moore (same time last year) that thrilled us so. Perhaps, he has indeed lost steam, as some observers had previously posited. This February collection is likely to remain linked to this month, to the end of a designer’s 17-year reign, and would date the moment we forget his departure. Maybe this wasn’t just Christopher Bailey’s last Burberry show; maybe this was his last laugh.

Photo: (top) Burberry/Youtube and (catwalk) Indigital.tv

Has stepping down as CEO been good for the creative output of Christopher Bailey?

Finales of fashion show rarely come with surprises, or even more to see. Burberry’s presentation this morning (last night, London time) was one that truly ended with extras, as if designer Christopher Bailey wasn’t quite done with what he wanted to express. The models (re)emerged in the order they first came in, but this time with an extra article of clothing.

They were not given something essential to wear. No, these were not pieces you’d rush out to buy, but they caused quite a rush of excitement. At first, you wondered if these were another set of clothes, then you realised that the models were fitted in basically an extra outer. But there was nothing basic about them, not in Burberry’s sense anyway, which often meant the trench coat or the house checks. These were flourishes—ornamental pieces worn to stimulate the senses, or to end a show with a bang.

Mr Bailey has turned a brief 4-min-or-so finale into a showcase of intense creativity that could have passed off as a couture fling, or, conversely, graduate-show excess. These were elaborate pieces that, we suspect, will not be produced.They covered mostly the shoulders: flounced, layered, and tiered fichu; the chunkiest cable and fringed scarf; oversized, lace falling band; metallic feathered capelet, glittering aventail; pearl-strung passementerie, closed and opens ruffs; oversized feathered collar, and so many pieces that would have had Viktor and Rolf nod with gleeful approval.

That this was a rather arty collection surprised not, for according to Burberry, the collection was “an exploration of sculpture and silhouette, material and process… inspired by the life and creations of Henry Moore’, the English artist and sculptor whose work ‘Large Reclining Figure’ currently sits outside the OCBC Building on Chulia Street. Mr Moore, who was from the same county as Mr Bailey: Yorkshire, is known for his exaggerated, alien-like shapes—usually curvy and undulating, sometimes corpulent. We did not see much of the Moore silhouette in the Burberry set—now known by the season non-specific ‘February collection’—but being inspired does not mean imitative.

What we did see is a startling show of asymmetry, quite in the spirit of Henry Moore. Asymmetric bodices and skirts are not new at Burberry, but those of such extreme skew and graphical placement are refreshing. Even the knits, British cable knits, were given a treatment that takes diagonal positions across the body. Some have mismatched sleeves. Much of the asymmetry was not just from left to right; it was from front to back, too. The lopsidedness was rather extreme in some cases: a one-sleeve, one-lapel jacket, for example, was pair with a vaguely Victorian blouse with profusion of ruffles on the side the jacket did not cover. Flat juxtaposed to the wildly textured is the new-born sister of Mr Bailey’s recurrent opaque to the sheer.

As it is evidenced elsewhere, oversized seems to be the order of the day at Burberry too. This is perhaps to keep to Henry Moore’s exaggerated shapes. Consistent with the seemingly one-size-too-large proportion, most of the sleeves were extra long, which, by now could be just on the wrong side of novel. Still, the sum effect is one that is consistent with the loosen-up attitude towards dressing. Unless you work in a bank or similarly corporate institutions, you’re probably rather enticed by Burberry giving the slouchy and the bulky an affirmative tick.

This is not saying that the English Rose—youthful and charming lass with a hint of blue blood—is no longer the trim muse at Burberry. It is possible that, by turning away from the Rose garden, Mr Bailey is suggesting that his customers are grown up and ready to adopt a more adventurous and sophisticated wardrobe. Let’s not over-rely on the house codes—enough checks for the present, he seemed to mean; let’s not be so straightforward; let’s no trod on the path Top Shop will follow.

As per the see-now, buy-now business model, the latest collection is immediately available at the Burberry website to order

This aesthetic boldness came at a time that follows Mr Bailey vacating the seat of the CEO (last year), where he sat (while also steering the design studio) since May 2014. It injected a sense of anticipation and exhilaration not experienced since his debut at Burberry in 2001. For quite a while, and this could be attributed to the toil of caring for the company’s bottom line, Mr Bailey had not imbued his designs with much of the London cool that he so carefully and successfully cultivated when he took over. This was later augmented by the indie bands and singers that the brand has aligned itself with and also invited to soundtrack the presentations. Singer-musicians such as the latest show’s Anna Calvi and past performers such as Alison Moyet and Paloma Faith, as well as Burberry Acoustic (the webpage that showcases under-the-radar bands) have added to the brand’s non-mainstream creative cred.

Now, back to strictly designing, Mr Bailey has illustrated that he can more than tweak British classics. This collection showed a knack for adding and distorting without seemingly going overboard. Flash more than dash may be the prevailing mood in fashion, but Christopher Bailey isn’t surrendering to mindless ostentation (save the finale pieces). He just gets the balance right, punching things up without dragging them down. There is, as Depeche Mode sang, “more besides joyrides.”

Photos: (finale and website) Burberry.com, (catwalk, individual) indigital.tv