Burberry Spring 2027: I Like When Things Don't Feel Perfect

"I like when things don't feel perfect. I like things to feel cool, youthful." That is Daniel Lee, answering a question about the tarnish, rumple and smudge in a collection from a brand that is usually Britain's most shiny, smooth and polished.

I love that answer, and I think it is the most honest thing a luxury designer has said this season. The show was held at Chelsea College of Arts, and the coolest person in the room was an 85-year-old in the front row: the textile designer Celia Birtwell, who taught there once. It was also the runway debut of Central Cee.

The collaboration is the heart of it. Lee had never collaborated with anyone on a collection before, and he said you find it when you find it. They met in May. He reimagined the Burberry check as a trellis across which her florals flourish, and later her doodled faces become 3D badges and beaded details.

His line about her prints is that they feel the same whether you wear them today or wore them in the seventies. I agree. The florals turn up all through the collection, and they are the print that makes the rest of the clothes feel loosened up.

The brand has leaned hard on the trench for a few seasons, and this collection finally opens up. The coat is still there, with most of the looks wearing a jacket, coat or trench, but on the runway it came in taffeta with puffed hems and with embellishment.

In the grid below, the Ruffled trench coat is the closest thing to that softer shape, and the Double-breasted cashmere trench coat is the classic it is loosening up. Everything on the runway looked roughened and touched, down to the smudged white edging on the sneaker soles. I find that so much more wearable than a coat that looks like it has never been outside. The Mayfair trench coat is the cropped, honey-coloured version of that looseness, and the Darliston, Leacroft and Ambleside jackets add a long navy shape, a quilted layer and a check.

The coats got the headlines, but the separates are where the collection felt most like Daniel Lee's line about things not feeling perfect. The Burberry Check intarsia cashmere overshirt is a shirt you wear like a jacket, and the EKD cardigans are soft enough to look a little slept in by the second wear, which I think is the point.

The dresses are the surprise. The caped cotton poplin midi reads like a trench that turned into a dress halfway through the fitting, and the belted wool wrap dress does the same trick in a heavier cloth. The check quilted vest is the piece I would layer over all of it.

If you only buy one thing here, I would make it the pleated check miniskirt, because it works with a grey crewneck and flat boots on an ordinary weekday, not just with the full runway look.

It was also, to my eye, a great shoe show. There are seventies-style strapped clogs worn under technical clothes, and flat shoes worn under chiffon gowns. That mismatch is the best thing in the collection. Lee said that when we buy a luxury product we are looking for an emotional attachment, not a necessity. A clog under a chiffon gown is exactly that. It is hard to justify and impossible to forget. The Urchin shearling-lined suede clogs are the pair I would start with, and the Burberry Check leather Mary Jane flats are the quieter version. The Urchin checked sandals and the Knight runners show the same mix of sweet and scuffed, and the Robin ballerina flats are the black option for the chiffon idea.