The choice of Burberry brand clothing

At the recent G8 Summit in St Petersburg Tony Blair gave George Bush a Burberry sweater (this was the Summit where a microphone was left on and the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom revealed themselves to be shallow idiots, making up foreign policy as they go along). The choice of Burberry brand clothing as Tony Blair’s gift is unusual. Did he think that by giving the President of America a Burberry item it would restore the brand’s image of exclusivity?



Above: Burberry shop window.

The Burberry check has become so popular in recent years that it has been imitated and copied by cheaper clothing manufacturers (“chavtastic bonanza” as one commentator put it), the pricing of these “me too” imitations completely eroding Burberry’s premium pricing policy. In response Burberry has gone back to classic styles based on English country life. Recently their shop window projected a willowy image that seems to have been based on Betjeman’s Myfanwy cycling through the Surrey countryside (“white the sheen of her dress” but leaving out the black stockings and navy blue serge).



Above: the cliché of “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist” was identified by George Orwell and quoted fifty years later in the 1990s by Prime Minister John Major as one of the component elements of English life. I have no idea whether this lady is an old maid, or on her way to Holy Communion, but she seems to fit the part. This is Betjeman’s Myfanwy in her early sixties, struggling to lose weight, her hips and elbows beginning to ache (looking into the chemist’s window for the price of cod liver oil – or maybe she could afford some glucosamine to get her joints working again).