Right at the very start of his career Daniel Lee spent time in New York City working for Donna Karan, an experience he still counts as formative. “I love the American sense of possibility, the directness, the can-do work ethic,” he says when we check in. He adds: “I always love coming back to New York: visiting will never be a burden.”
Burberry’s chief creative officer is speaking from London’s Soho, where Burberry has been temporarily based during the renovation of its Westminster HQ almost since he joined the biggest brand in British luxury at the tail end of 2022. We’re discussing New York because once he’s done fine-tuning the house’s latest pre-collection—“this time of year is always crazy”—he’ll be hopping across the pond next week to formally cut the ribbon on another Burberry renovation project: Burberry’s Lee-redesigned flagship store on 57th Street.
First opened in 1970, then expanded hugely at the turn of the millennium, the six-story site has been comprehensively refreshed. Says Lee: “It’s a prestigious, beautiful place, and we actually own the building. It’s also the first store that I started to work on when I joined in terms of moving forward and evolving the architecture concept of Burberry.” He adds: “A store should usually have a very long lifespan. That makes it very different to designing a collection that you know typically lives for a season.”
When Lee officially christens the store’s reopening on October 16 with a cocktail and dinner, guests will enter a space that he says has been crafted “to bring back a feeling of Britishness into the environment.” Imported limestone floor, shelving, and facade details are meant to evoke the elegant robustness of Georgian architecture. Lee has further been inspired by the cast iron railings and street architecture of the British capital to shape the rails, balustrades, and handrails in-store. “The material palette reflects the essence of the house and our heritage,” he explains. Another element is the work of textile artist Tom Atton Moore, who has created a series of rugs that will be installed across the site. Says Lee: “We really wanted to transmit the spirit of an English country home in the carpets and tapestry.”
A further strand in Lee’s Burberry tapestry is being launched today. Entitled “It’s Always Burberry Weather,” the new campaign takes the form of a series of film vignettes and portraits featuring seven contemporary house ambassadors wearing seven Lee-reimagined Burberry outerwear classics in classic Brit locales. That cast comprises actors Olivia Colman, Zhang Jingyi, Barry Keoghan, and Cara Delevingne (herself a heritage Burberry muse) alongside musician Little Simz and English soccer stars Cole Palmer and Eberechi Eze. Says Lee of the casting: “We asked ourselves, ‘who really embodies the spirit of Burberry and the idea of modern Britishness?’ We really wanted a cast of people that represent different types of art forms, different types of creativity, and different types of craft, because the audience for Burberry is so broad—I don’t think this brand is so narrow in its lane.”