The building is nestled at the end of a London street, in the heart of Soho, and neighbors an art gallery, a film production company and a record store. The elevator is permanently broken. Here, no plaque warns of the identity of the tenants. However, this is where the eighty employees of the creative studio of the British giant Burberry, highness of the trench coat and tartan, work. And, at their head, in his bright office on the fourth floor: Daniel Lee, 38 years old, English accent, young leading man appearance, unfailing determination.
His appointment, in October 2022, to the position of artistic director marked a double return. The one from Burberry – “a name that awakens a patriotic feeling”, he notes – in the hands of a British stylist, after four years under the direction of Italian Riccardo Tisci. But also that of Daniel Lee himself in London, after an electrifying three-year mandate in Milan at Bottega Veneta.
There, his ability to imagine successful bags and shoes seduced buyers and fashion editors and delighted executives at the parent company, Kering, with a 36% increase in turnover. during his passage. “At the beginning, no calculation paralyzes you and it is through a form of naivety that you achieve success,” today puts Daniel Lee into perspective, as if to defuse the enormous expectations weighing on him.
” A lifestyle “
At Burberry, it must indeed succeed in shaping more than a fashion, ” a lifestyle “, as he says, capable of attracting crowds and increasing turnover from 3.09 billion pounds sterling in 2023 (3.62 billion euros) to 4 billion then 5 billion in the longer term. “Burberry is a mini-department store. In a way, you must be able to find everything there,” he specifies.
Besides shoes, one of his strong points, he says he enjoys touching everything, umbrellas and hot water bottles, scarves and bathrobes, even children’s clothing. The son of a mechanic and an administrative agent, he grew up in Yorkshire, in Bradford, on the edge of Leeds, “a place where fashion meant nothing” and from which he left at the age of 18 to satisfy his appetite for culture in London, a studio on Brick Lane as his base.
“From Burberry, I knew the trench coat that Queen Elizabeth wore or a tartan scrunchie that a soap opera character on TV could use to tie her hair. When I accompanied my father to football, I also saw Burberry. Finally, a little truth and a lot of counterfeiting. » Relatives of the family also worked for the brand, in the in-house factories a few dozen kilometers away, still in operation today for the production of gabardines, linings and the making of collars.
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