The RICCARDO TISCI Dossier: Starring Cate Blanchett, CA Conrad, and Mert & Marcus

When it was announced that I was going to Burberry, everybody was shocked. They said, “Why Burberry? Why Burberry?”
– Riccardo Tisci, Burberry's Chief Creative Officer since 2018

We didn’t. Why wouldn’t the original luxury streetwear designer go to the original luxury streetwear brand?

Inventor and outfitter Thomas Burberry always designed with functionality in mind, engineering sartorial solutions for a uniquely British problem with international implications: the weather. Marrying expert tailoring with cutting-edge technology, Burberry created a luxury brand that was revolutionary in its wearability. The house’s masterly outerwear and unmistakable house icons have an appeal that has long straddled the boundaries of age, culture, and class. What Burberry embodies as a brand, Tisci embodies as a designer: both have mastered a language of luxury that is universally legible.

Why Burberry? Find your own answer in portraits of actress Cate Blanchett; in the faces of young Berliners; in the words of the poet CA Conrad; in the intimacies exchanged over drinks in Paris and the highlights of a creative career in retrospect, which will unfold online in a three-part series this week.