Burberry pairs with Smythson for leather notebooks, games and accessories

Burberry and Smythson have joined for the first time on a holiday collection of leather notebooks, games and small accessories. The range pairs Burberry's signature designs with Smythson's leather craft and traditional bookbinding, and it launches Thursday in stores and online for both houses.

Notebook covers carry weather-themed illustrations and phrases drawn from Burberry's background in exploration and weather-resistant outerwear. They are embossed with lines such as "Lovely weather for ducks," "Come rain or shine," and "Rain check," the kind of sayings a British house trades in.

Inside, the notebooks are filled with Smythson's signature blue lightweight paper. The opening and closing pages feature a London map print inspired by Burberry's fall 2026 runway collection, or the house check itself. Each notebook is handmade at Smythson's bookbinding workshop in Hertfordshire, England.

The collaboration extends into games. Playing cards and roll-up chess and backgammon boards are cut from Smythson's signature Panama cross-grain leather, with zip-pocket compartments lined in Burberry's house check. The cards are gilt-edged and illustrated and come in their own leather travel cases.

A double-pack edition of the cards adds Smythson's signature wafer pencil and a paper notepad for keeping score. Prices run from £210 for the notebooks up to £850 for the roll-up chessboard, with the £210 entry point buying one Smythson notebook gold-stamped with your initials. A complimentary personalization service means each piece can be gold-stamped with as many as three initials.

The timing is pointed. Burberry is marking 170 years in business this year, while Smythson turns 140 next year, so the collection reads as a meeting of two anniversaries as much as a product drop. Both houses have leaned on their British identity rather than yield it.

Smythson was established in 1887 on New Bond Street in London. Queen Victoria's residences commissioned stationery from the firm in the 1890s, and it made what is credited as the world's first portable diary in 1908. That is a heritage of writing things down by hand before any of it was a brand story.

The house also shares Burberry's taste for exploration. Smythson created bespoke diaries and logbooks for the Transglobe Expedition led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Charles R. Burton and Oliver Shepard in the 1970s. Burberry, for its part, invented gabardine in 1879 and dressed polar expeditions before it dressed a runway.

Two British houses, one check

Burberry brings the check and the weatherproof history; Smythson brings the bookbinding and the paper. Neither house is lending its name out for it.

We know the trench side of Burberry well. Our guide to the best trench coats for men rates Burberry alongside Saint Laurent and Canada Goose, and the gabardine that underpins this collection is the same fabric foundation as the outerwear the house is built on.

The accessories angle is a quieter lane for Burberry than its coats and scarves, but the £210 entry point makes this the most accessible way into the collaboration.

What the range is selling for

At the bottom of the ladder are the notebooks at £210, hand-bound in Hertfordshire and fitted with Smythson's blue paper. The playing cards are above them in leather travel cases, and the roll-up chessboard is the top of the line at £850. Backgammon boards land somewhere between the two.

Every piece carries the option of complimentary personalization, with three initials the ceiling on the gold stamp. That turns a holiday gift into a monogrammed one at no extra cost, which matters when the product itself is paper, card and leather of the sort that outlives its first Christmas.

The launch spans both brands' stores and websites, so the collection is not locked to a single door. A shopper can buy a Burberry-check-lined backgammon board from either house and have it stamped. The collaboration is the first of its kind between the two, and it arrives ahead of the holiday rush.

Burberry's bucket hats have earned a place in our winter coverage before, and the weatherproof roots this collection gestures at are the same ones that made the reversible hat worth recommending. The house keeps returning to the British weather as material, whether in gabardine, wool or a notebook cover.

The two anniversaries give the range a longer shelf life than a seasonal drop.

Neither house has said whether the range is limited or on what scale it was produced, and the double-pack card edition's price has not been split out from the rest.