Here’s a First Look at Daniel Lee’s Burberry

When Riccardo Tisci took the helm as Burberry’s creative director in 2018, he enlisted graphic designer Peter Saville (who famously created the album artwork for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures) for a branding revamp, swapping out the heritage label’s prim serif font for blocky Helvetica. The logo symbolized a new, modern Burberry, and Tisci placed it prominently on all sorts of garments, from drawstring hoodies to lace gowns.

Now, Daniel Lee, the former Bottega Veneta designer who succeeded Tisci at Burberry in September, is seeking a similar refresh. On Monday, the brand announced “the first creative expression” from Lee, in the form of an edgy new print campaign alongside a whimsical new logo, set in a delicate, maybe even slightly mischievous, curled serif typeface.

Courtesy of Tyrone Lebon for Burberry

The campaign was photographed by Tyrone Lebon, who previously shot for Lee’s Bottega, and features a host of very British faces like rappers Shygirl, John Glacier, and Skepta, plus models Liberty Ross and Lennon Gallagher (who very much looks like his dad, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher). There are also a few ambiance shots in the mix, including one of a glowing-eyed red fox skittering across a London sidewalk. 

The rebrand includes a motif that Lee exhumed from deep in the Burberry archives: the “Equestrian Knight Design,” which was the winning entry of a public competition to design a new logo for the brand way back in 1901. (Burberry itself was founded in 1856.) The 122-year-old emblem features a valiant rider and horse in mid-gallop, carrying a banner that bears the Latin word “prorsum,” meaning “forwards.”

Courtesy of Tyrone Lebon for Burberry

When Lee left Bottega in 2021, the split felt abrupt: the 37-year-old designer had spent three very commercially successful years modernizing the Italian luxury brand, making the Bottega name so hot that the American rapper Bia would rhyme it with the word “bodega” in a song that blew up on TikTok. Burberry execs are hoping Lee can set the brand on a similar hot streak. 

“Nothing here is broken by any means. Burberry is a great brand—but it could be doing a bit better,” the brand’s CEO Jonathan Akeroyd told the Sunday Times in November. “Today Britain is much more cosmopolitan, there is a little bit more of an edge to it, a different spirit…Daniel is thinking hard about who are the icons of Britain today, he’s got some really exciting ideas. I promise you, you’re going to see an incredibly strong brand image.” Lee will show his first Burberry collection during London Fashion week this month.