The Burberry SS27 Celia Birtwell collaboration is, in the plainest terms, one of Daniel Lee’s best collections for the house. Birtwell, the print designer and a figure who shaped the visual texture of British fashion across the 1960s and 1970s, is 85 years old. The partnership is not a nostalgic exercise. It reads as exactly the opposite: confident, light-handed, and rather joyful.
Burberry SS27 Celia Birtwell: How the Florals Were Built
Lee has not made collaboration a signature of his tenure at Burberry. This, then, felt like a considered commitment rather than a marketing reflex. Birtwell created the floral motifs used throughout the collection, and their range is considerable: mimosas, rosebuds and violets embroidered onto pencil skirts, shoes and bags; delicate sprigs applied to georgette trench coats; rosebuds printed across men’s shirts. Even the umbrellas were embroidered with flowers, which tells you something about the degree of commitment to the conceit.
Lee described Birtwell as ‘the epitome of British fashion,’ a phrase that is easy to reach for but, in her case, earns its keep. She designed prints for her then husband Ossie Clark, and the pair were immortalised by David Hockney in his painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. That image, the draped domesticity of it, the light falling through the window, is now practically synonymous with a particular idea of cultivated British life. Birtwell’s prints carry some of that atmosphere without labouring the point.
Birtwell’s face illustrations appeared on knits and as small discs arranged across a coat. Her florals were not applied uniformly. They arrived embroidered, printed, and woven, which kept the eye moving and stopped any single garment from tipping into costume. Lee, speaking about her work, said: ‘Whether you wear them today or you wore them in the ’70s, they’re amazing.’ He described her prints as ‘incredible’ and ‘timeless.’
The Check Reimagined, From Trellis to Gingham to Stripe
The most architecturally interesting passage of the collection concerns the Burberry House Check. Birtwell reworked it into a painterly, trellis-like version adorned with climbing flowers. Lee said that her interpretation made the check more human: ‘If you are buying a luxury product it’s not a necessity product. It’s an emotional purchase so it needs to feel human.’ According to Burberry PLC, the transformation goes further still: through Birtwell’s eyes, the House Check resolves first into gingham, then reduces further into a simple stripe. It is a quietly radical move, unwinding one of fashion’s most recognisable marks down to its structural essentials before allowing the flowers to climb back in.
That sensitivity to reduction, to taking something and finding what it really is, runs through the wider collection. Lee introduced military motifs, with epaulettes embroidered in a line-drawing style onto the shoulders of trench coats. Utility shirts appeared, covered in floral embroidery as a matter of course. Sportswear featured alongside lightweight cagoules that zipped under jackets, worn by both men and women.
Throughout, Lee constructed a studied patina of lived-in imperfection. Trainers looked scuffed. Coats were crumpled rather than pressed. Denim came faded. Central Cee walked the runway in a manner that made the whole thing feel inhabited rather than presented. The effect is deliberate: luxury worn rather than displayed, ownership implied rather than announced.
Celia Birtwell‘s prints have always had this quality. They do not ask to be seen from across a room. They reward proximity, the close inspection of a stem or the mapping of a repeat. Lee has, in choosing her as his collaborator, made the same argument for Burberry that she has always made for print: that the most enduring things are the ones that give you something new each time you look.
