The Brief Was Simple. The Execution Was Not.
170 years is a long time. And Burberry, to its credit, didn’t try to summarise all of it with a slogan or a glossy montage. Instead, chief creative officer Daniel Lee did something more interesting: he invited 23 stars from film, music, sport, and fashion to wear the iconic gabardine trench exactly as they saw fit, and then handed the camera to Tim Walker. The result is The Trench, Portraits of an Icon, a campaign that feels less like an advertisement and more like a portrait series for a house that finally remembers who it is.
Shot entirely in black and white, each star wears the trench, but the little details tell the real story. The pop of a collar here, a pair of sheer black tights and leather pumps there.Same coat. Completely different energy. That is the whole point.
The Cast
The lineup alone makes this one of the most talked-about campaigns of the year. Among the 23 names: Kendall Jenner, Kate Moss, Jonathan Bailey, Kid Cudi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Little Simz, Teyana Taylor, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Matthew Macfadyen, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Generations, industries, and continents represented in a single coat. Teyana Taylor, notably, had already made headlines the night before Burberry’s London Fashion Week show, wearing a stunning Burberry trench coat gown to the 2026 BAFTAs.By the time the campaign dropped, she had already proven the point it was trying to make.
Why It Matters
This campaign is not happening in a vacuum. Since CEO Joshua Schulman arrived, Burberry has been doubling down on its three signature pillars, the scarf, the check, and the trench, operating on the thesis that the brand has the most opportunity where it has the most authenticity.The numbers back it up: outerwear sales have been climbing. But beyond the business logic, there is something genuinely moving about watching a house strip away the noise and return to the thing that started it all.
As Schulman put it, the trench coat inspires people across generations to express their individuality while remaining unmistakably Burberry. Sunday night in black and white, with 23 of the world’s most compelling people wearing it their way, that case was made perfectly.
