There is nothing more British than a Burberry trench coat. The look has come to define not just the brand but the aesthetic of London's biggest style stars from Alexa Chung yo Kate Moss. Slipping into a Burberry trench coat isn’t the same as buying a plane ticket to the city, but it's honestly pretty close; it radiates with the energy of a very specific time and place.
At the fall 2024 show, designer Daniel Lee introduced some new riffs on the iconic trench, which he has been doing since he took over the helm two seasons ago. But this time around, he also presented some alternative outerwear that was just as British and just as effortlessly glamorous. Models wore shaggy moss green coats, wool trenches with lapels covered in a spiraled zipper detailing, and nylon bomber jackets with exaggerated green collars reminiscent of a lion’s mane.
There were also a handful of toggle coats—a shape that seems to be gaining ground in popularity. One, in white tweed, looked like a cross between a Penny Lane jacket and a classic slicker, with storm flap details and chest pockets.
But perhaps most surprising was a neon orange cropped trench coat, styled with a classic tweed Burberry check dress and red wedge leather sock boots. It shouldn’t have worked but absolutely did—a testament to Lee’s ability to bring back the Burberry of the past while still making it feel entirely his own.
What makes London style so famous is the way people dress to manage life in an unpredictable city. Londoners dress with ease and practicality; you can tell they're planning their clothes around their lives, not vice versa. And that was exactly the vibe at today's show.
You could see it in the crowd: Typically, there’s over-the-top peacocking happening at these kinds of things, but at Burberry guests looked authentically themselves, whether they were wearing head-to-toe check or a classic raincoat that was so cool it would make you sick.
And you could see it on the runway, especially in the styling. Models wore their showstopping coats with enormous crossbody messenger bags left wide open, as if they were simply too busy having fun to bother keeping them zipped. As one editor next to me put it, “Now this feels like London!”
Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.
