The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon Reworks 170 Years of Design at the V&A

The Burberry trench has spent more than a century moving through war, travel, cinema, fashion, and street style without losing its unmistakable signature. Now, the V&A in London strips the coat back to its construction and follows every turn it takes once designers start bending the rules in the exhibition The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon.

From September 21, the exhibition brings together archive material, historical garments, and 19 runway looks from the past 25 years. Move from the trench’s technical beginnings to metallic silk, mirror embroidery, baroque prints, and fringe, while the same familiar structure keeps resurfacing underneath.

Function Becomes Signature

The story starts with gabardine, the tightly woven fabric Thomas Burberry developed in 1879 to resist rain without the weight of traditional waterproof clothing. Long before the trench became a fashion code, it was crafted around movement, weather, and utility.

Follow the coat through the details that later became unmistakably Burberry: the storm flap, throat latch, hand-finished collar, double-breasted front, and House Check lining. What now reads as style began as function, and The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon exhibition makes that evolution visible. Early catalogs and archive pieces show how the trench shifted from practical outerwear into a design language strong enough to survive decades of reinterpretation.

When the Rules Start to Bend

Across the exhibition’s runway selection, Burberry pushes the trench far beyond its original purpose. Metallic pink silk replaces sober cotton. Mirror embroidery turns utility into ornament. A purple baroque-print version with fringe pulls the silhouette into something far more theatrical. Still, the structure refuses to disappear.

Move through these reinterpretations and the familiar elements keep resurfacing: the belt, collar, flap, proportion, and double-breasted construction. Change the fabric, color, finish, or scale, and the trench still holds its identity underneath.

The Right Room for the Story

The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon sits in the Prince Consort Gallery at V&A South Kensington, a rarely seen space once used to display textiles in historic mahogany cabinets. That setting feels almost tailor-made for the subject. Rather than isolating the trench inside a glossy fashion environment, the V&A places it within a room already connected to fabric, construction, and decorative arts.

Among the historical pieces, find a Burberry car coat worn by British designer Hardy Amies, alongside objects from both the Burberry Archive and the V&A collection. Several appear publicly for the first time.

The exhibition also signals a much larger relationship between Burberry and the museum. In fall 2028, the V&A plans to unveil the new Burberry Gallery as part of a wider redesign of its fashion spaces.