Burberry

Burberry is a British luxury house built on a single invention: the waterproof gabardine that Thomas Burberry patented in 1879 and turned into the trench coat. It has held a place in our ranking of the most popular luxury brands online year after year, and another creative reinvention is working its way through the business. Burberry has repositioned itself repeatedly over the past twenty years.

Underneath the churn the product has not moved. A Burberry trench is technical clothing that happens to be beautiful. The gabardine it is cut from went to the South Pole before the War Office turned it into a coat.

Behind the brand

History of Burberry

Thomas Burberry was twenty-one when he opened a drapery in Basingstoke in 1856. In 1879 he developed gabardine, a cotton twill waterproofed at the yarn stage rather than coated after weaving. It shed rain and still let air through. No other weatherproof fabric of the era managed both.

Explorers took it first. Roald Amundsen wore Burberry gabardine to the South Pole in 1911, and Ernest Shackleton took it to Antarctica. The British War Office then commissioned an officer’s coat with storm shields, D-rings and a gun flap. The trench coat is that coat, and every detail on it started as a function.

The check arrived in the 1920s as a trench lining in camel, black, white and red. It escaped into the wider market in the 1990s and 2000s, and the house then spent a decade living down its own ubiquity. Christopher Bailey rebuilt it through the 2010s, Riccardo Tisci and then Daniel Lee took their own runs at it, and the trench outlasted all of them. Burberry trades publicly as Burberry Group plc, so no family or conglomerate controls the direction.

The Burberry trench coat

The trench is the reason to come here, and Burberry sells it in a handful of named fits. The Kensington is the slim, longer heritage cut. The Chelsea is shorter with a more contemporary line. The Waterloo and the Sandringham fall between them on length and shoulder. All four use the same gabardine and the same military hardware.

That hardware is not decoration. The epaulettes held rank insignia, the D-ring belt carried equipment, the storm flap on the right shoulder kept rain off a rifle, and the back yoke channels water away from the body. Burberry still runs a bespoke trench service for buyers who want the fit made to measure.

Gabardine is water-resistant, not waterproof. It sheds a passing shower the way a good raincoat does, but it has no taped seams and will wet through in sustained rain. We put the trench against dedicated rain shells in our guides to the best winter coats for men and the best raincoats for women.

The check, the scarf and the fragrance

The camel check is the second signature and the most copied pattern in fashion. The cashmere scarf carries it best, and it is the most common way people buy into the house, woven in Scotland from yarn Burberry has used for decades.

The check is also the source of the brand’s hardest lesson. Through the early 2000s it was printed on everything, faked everywhere, and adopted as a status marker in a way that pushed the label downmarket in Britain. Burberry pulled the pattern off most of its products and rationed it back to linings and trims, and it spent the next fifteen years rebuilding the name higher up the market. The rebrands track that fight: Christopher Bailey’s digital-first runway era, Riccardo Tisci’s 2018 monogram, and Daniel Lee’s return to the Equestrian Knight and a heritage blue since 2023.

Fragrance is quietly the largest part of the business by volume. Burberry Her, Burberry Goddess, Burberry Hero and the older Brit each outsell most of the ready-to-wear. They fund the house more than they define it, so treat them as an entry point rather than the point.

Bags are the newer growth story. The Lola, the Knight and the B-clip crossbody are the pieces the house is positioning alongside the trench as a second reason to buy, though none of them yet carries the authority the coat does.

Craftsmanship and where Burberry is made

The heritage trench coats are made in Castleford, Yorkshire, in a factory Burberry kept running rather than offshored. A single coat passes through more than a hundred separate operations, and the gabardine is still woven to the original specification. The rest of the range, the seasonal outerwear, knitwear and accessories, is produced across Europe. The Castleford coat and the seasonal outerwear share a shelf, but they are not the same object, and the price gap between them is real.

Where to buy Burberry

Burberry sells through its own stores, its official site, department stores and luxury etailers. The heritage trench is worth buying new for the fit, since the house offers multiple lengths and cuts that are hard to judge secondhand. Because the check is so heavily faked, buy from Burberry or an authorized retailer, and check the woven logo tag, the even check alignment at the seams and the finish on the buttons before you trust any resale piece.

Burberry also runs outlet stores, and they are a real way to buy the label for less. Just know what you are getting. Outlet stock is usually seasonal outerwear and accessories made outside Castleford, not the heritage trench, so the discount comes with a different product, not the same coat at a lower price.

Burberry price

A heritage gabardine trench runs into the low thousands, cashmere scarves land in the mid hundreds, and the outerwear made outside Castleford costs meaningfully less. Burberry is a genuine luxury house rather than a premium one, and the price carries the label as much as the make. This is one of the few places in luxury where the most expensive version is the one we would actually recommend, because the Yorkshire-made coat earns the gap.