Sienna And Lily Make Burberry’s Christmas

BURBERRY is marking Christmas this year with a special short film celebrating the life of its founder, Thomas Burberry, starring Sienna Miller, Lily James, Domhnall Gleeson and Dominic West.

The short, which has been released this morning, is entitled The Tale of Thomas Burberry and comes in the form of a three-minute trailer, written by Academy Award-nominated Matt Charman and directed by Academy Award-winning Asif Kapadia. Gleeson plays protagonist Burberry, with Miller and James taking on the roles of mother of Burberry’s children and pilot Betty Dawson respectively – both fictionalised characters. West plays Polar explorer and patron of Burberry, Ernest Shackleton, whose expedition to the Antarctic in 1914 forms the central plotline.

“This Christmas, as we celebrate our 160th anniversary we wanted to tell the story of Thomas Burberry – pioneer, inventor, innovator, and the man behind the iconic trench coat – in our own words,” said Burberry chief creative and chief executive officer, Christopher Bailey. “The film we have made is a brief glimpse inspired by his full and extraordinary life, which threaded its way through the history of the twentieth century in all its tumultuous highs and lows. To do justice to this story, we turned to a team of truly great twenty- first century British talent: Asif Kapadia, a director whose work I admire enormously, and a cast of our brightest and our best actors: Domhnall Gleeson, Sienna Miller, Dominic West and Lily James. We feel very proud to be sharing The Tale of Thomas Burberry this Christmas – his spirit and his vision are still at the heart of everything we do at Burberry today.”