4 headlines from the Burberry autumn/winter 2025 show at the Tate Britain

THERE’S A SCENE in season four of The Crown where Margaret Thatcher (played by Gillian Anderson) gets snarkily told off by the royal family for wearing her signature cobalt blue skirt-suit to a hunting weekend in Balmoral. She’s knee-deep in mud and soil as she and the Queen (Olivia Coleman) are closing in on a monumental Imperial stag. The leader of the Conservative Party also forgot her wellies. Hunter green would’ve been the appropriate option so as to blend in with the Scottish Highlands. But for Thatcher, who grew up middle-class, she wouldn’t have been attuned to the particulars of dressing for a hunting weekend. What she wore revealed her outsider social status.

This may not have been the case, but this shade of cobalt blue has been a hallmark of Burberry artistic director Daniel Lee’s creative upheaval since joining in 2022. Rather than something that sticks out in the Burberry universe, Lee has used the shade to create tension with the earthy colour palette and lifestyle that the heritage British brand has become known to cater for. (Burberry is also a royal warrant holder.)

For autumn/winter 2025, Lee was inspired by these British films and TV shows about this very upper-class way of dressing in England. Turning the Tate Britain into his own countryside tableau, the cobalt runway contrasted with the country wears of the collection; models walked through pillars you’d see on a country manor facade; the backdrop was a curtain printed with a landscape painting. On the clothes, “think of them as weekend escapees,” Lee said in a statement. “It’s that great Friday night exodus from London to the countryside for long rainy walks and to disconnect in the great outdoors. It’s day-trips to grand stately homes.” If only the ’80s had Lee, maybe Thatcher wouldn’t have made such a faux pas.

Here, we take a look at four of the newsworthiest moments from the brand’s autumn/winter 2025 show.

1. Actors walked the runway

Casting actors to walk in runway shows is nothing new, sometimes even treated as a novelty, or seen at worst, a gimmick. But their best use comes as exploring the thematic elements of a collection – treating them as actors. “It’s through incredible actors, and the films and TV [shows] they’ve appeared in, that we learn so much about the rules of dressing up,” said Lee. This is especially true for a country like Britain. 

Of the older men having their menswear moment, actor Richard E. Grant, who played played the aristocratic dad in 2023’s class satire Saltburn, was wrapped in a heavy wool coat with a thistle corsage pinned to his lapel. Jason Isaacs, who is currently in season three of The White Lotus but better known to another generation as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise, also appeared on the runway, wearing a chocolate brown trench and grasping a red tartan umbrella. 

Naturally, we know these actors more for their characters, which also became a source of tension Lee used to dissect the rules of social observation. “Rules, which we’ve unpicked to inform the collection,” he continued. “Old rules made into new rules; indoors furnishing fabrics made into outdoor clothes. Our cast of actors just chimed with the bohemian irreverence. And, of course, they know how to make clothes come alive.” Lee also made sure to cast actors known for camp-y and eccentric roles; Grant’s character in Saltburn is definitely the type of eccentric aristocrat to pin a flower he plucked on his property to his lapel.

2. The Burberry knight makes a front row appearance

When you go to a fashion show, attendees like to dress in the work of the designer. In this case, however, no look went harder than dressing up as the Burberry knight. He was a sensation, going around and taking front row photos with A-list celebs in attendance like actors Nicholas Hoult and Damien Lewis. The only anachronistic touch to his fit, though, would be that Burberry check scarf. Certainly a bit – identity still unknown – it felt as if a knight had jumped off one of the tapestries Lee used as inspiration for his pieces.

3. Get ready to wear your furniture

There is new meaning to the idiom ‘being a part of the furniture’. On his fixation on the countryside, Lee was fascinated by the lavish materials used in furnishings and wallpapers. The patterned velvet on a sofa was repurposed into a trench coat; faded tapestries were featured on turtlenecks; an animal skin rug used to line the interior of a leather jacket. This is less about upcycling your grandmother’s furniture, but more so about Lee’s exploration of recontextualising these materials in garments traditionally worn for the great outdoors. Because how much use is a trench coat if it’s made of velvet?

4. British heritage as the backdrop

The Tate Britain, located in the London borough of Westminster, wasn’t only the stage for the presentation, but used to mark the one-year partnership between the museum’s Painting Conservation Studios and Burberry. The two entities struck up a collaboration for the museum’s conservation efforts to help preserve its collection of tapestries and paintings by British masters, and effectively, British material culture. “Tate Britain is an unrivalled archive of incredible art, it made perfect sense to show with a British backdrop for a British brand, both celebrating British creativity,” said Lee of the partnership. This extended into the paintings Lee used as his curtain backdrops on the runway, and, of course, his overall theme rooted in British classicism and romanticism.

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