Shockwaves in Paris as Riccardo Tisci named new Burberry designer

Imagine the Queen announcing that the palace corgis were being retired in favour of a pack of rottweilers, and you get an idea of the surprise at Paris fashion week as news travelled down the front row that Riccardo Tisci would take over design duties from Christopher Bailey at Burberry.

Burberry is best known for its classic trenchcoats. Riccardo Tisci made shark teeth and nose ring motifs at Givenchy, the label which he designed for 12 years until January 2017. At Givenchy, Tisci took a Parisian house best known for its links with Audrey Hepburn and put smoking, burnt-out wrecks of cars on the catwalk, Kardashians in the front row, and emeralds dangling from the septums of models.

Burberry champions British traditions, and dressed a smiling Duchess of Cambridge for last year’s Vogue cover. Tisci is known for darkly subversive, unapologetically sexual, deeply urban, boundary-pushing fashion and talked Kanye West into wearing a black leather kilt during his 2011 Watch the Thrones tour.

What links Riccardo Tisci to Burberry is its CEO Marco Gobbetti. It was Gobbetti who appointed Tisci, then a relatively unknown 30-year-old designer showing an own-name collection at Milan fashion week, to Givenchy in 2005. The appointment suggests that Gobbetti, who joined Burberry from Celine last summer, will not be relying on a light touch in his turnaround plan for the company, which grew from a heritage brand into a fashion powerhouse during Bailey’s tenure but has struggled in recent years as the luxury market enters a slowdown phase.

Source: theguardian