Burberry spring-summer 2018

“As I watch the sun go down, watching the world fade away,” The Communards sang on the soundtrack to Christopher Bailey’s farewell show at Burberry, “all the memories of you come rushing back to me.” Bailey was 16 when that song was released in 1987. You could picture his teenaged self in the boys – and girls – who walked him out of the House of Burberry on Saturday evening, into the sunset. They were clad in clothes that didn’t just reference the designer’s 17 years at the house, but most of his own life and Burberry’s history, too. Retro, you might say. “It’s kind of a yesterday-today-and-tomorrow,” Bailey said before the show, surrounded by the wealth of high-spirited silhouettes and motifs that made up this collection. But it wasn’t a greatest hits parade. “The biggest challenge is always making sure that we are not resting on our laurels and that we remain courageous enough and curious enough to keep pushing it,” he pointed out. “Challenging ourselves is always a challenge.” Look back at the legacy Bailey is leaving behind at Burberry and you’ll see what he means, even if his gradual – i.e. commercially successful – progress has made it seem so fluid.

Recently, however, Bailey changed his pace. Since switching to the straight-to-store format four seasons ago and leaving the tent in Kensington Palace Gardens where the Burberry shows took place for years – following the same procedure, which usually included by a live performance – it was as if he experienced a reinvigoration of sorts. The Burberry girl suddenly seemed cooler, a little more streetwise than English Rose, and the boys quite brilliantly harked back to a time when Bailey’s biggest challenge was to tear the house’s trademark Nova check away from the wardrobes of football fans and soap stars. In that sense, his time at the house had come full circle, and Bailey – who had stepped down as CEO to focus more on design – was rediscovering his creative exuberance. “There’s a timing for these things and I feel like you’ve got to be sensitive to them. When people are most not expecting it, it’s the moment to play with it,” he said, reflecting on the many stages he’s lived through at Burberry. “I’ve always tried to experiment a little bit and try new things.” The case was no different for his swan song collection, which felt like his freest and happiest ever.

Set in a building in White City – an up-and-coming area of London that’s home to the newest Soho House – the show borrowed an epic light installation from the Museum of Old and New Art in Australia, complete with swinging pendulum spots and laser lights for the finale. It was worlds away from what Bailey’s shows looked like just three years ago, which begged the question: were the changes he staged at Burberry an early preparation for his exiting process? “It was really in the summer that I made the decision,” he clarified. “But over the last five years I’ve been trying to figure out when would be the time to leave gracefully. I’ve always wanted to make sure that whenever I felt it was the right time, I didn’t try to cling on to something. Personally, it felt right for lots of different reasons. Professionally, I feel I’m still really curious. I want to learn and explore and discover new things again. You get to a point after so many years where everything is quite familiar; the process is quite familiar. I’m excited to throw myself into something completely different again.”

He expressed those final thoughts in a collection that spoke to fashion’s undying nostalgia for normative streetwear: orange velour tracksuits, college-style sweatshirts, distinctly 1980s geo-patterned windbreakers, and check bondage trousers with kilts. They embraced more than a few of the tribes and subcultures Bailey must have encountered on his path to Burberry. The classic beige Nova check was represented in jackets reminiscent of Members Only and the chav-tastic collaboration Bailey did with Gosha Rubchinskiy last year, as well as in tracksuits patch-worked with baroque floral print. Then he revisited the oversized and wildly expensive shearling jackets that had some of us contemplating Burberry Bond Street burglary circa 2010. A brocade coat recounted some of his more quaint and dainty collections painted in pastel lace, which would have been the case for an embroidered tulle evening dress as well, had it not been mischievously layered over a logo sweatshirt like something out of Clueless. As for those enormously casual full skirts, Bailey hadn’t missed the memo on the relaxed glamour currently conquering fashion.

“With each collection you have memories of things that were happening to you personally, and so they’ve all resonated in lots of different ways,” he said, reflecting on the nearly 70 collections he’s designed for Burberry. “We did a David Hockney-inspired collection in 2005,” he recalled, the spring/summer menswear show to be precise. “That was a really important one for me because there was a lot of stuff going on in my life. That one always is very solid in my mind.” It was the year his boyfriend Geert Cloet died from brain cancer. A year before, the couple had bought a house in Bailey’s native Yorkshire to be close to his parents. Hockney, who was born a few towns over from Halifax where Bailey grew up had been a local hero of his since childhood. In today’s show, the designer once again paid homage to the artist’s work – obviously an emotional reference to him – in multi-coloured knitwear that resembled the landscape paintings and colouration of Hockney.

Finally, he embellished the collection with rainbow motifs in knitwear, leather jackets and a faux fur cape as a tribute to the LGBT+ community. When he came out for his bow, the fashion industry gave him a standing ovation. “It’s quite upbeat. I would say it’s positive. It’s a big mix of everything I love,” he reflected earlier. “I found this show quite freeing, quite liberating.” Bailey, now married to the actor Simon Woods with whom he has two young daughters, said he has no immediate plans for his next chapter. Speaking to Chelsea Clinton after the show, I suggested she might give her close friend a job at the Clinton Foundation. “Wait and see,” she retorted. “I’m excited for this next phase of the company and the person, who’s going to take over,” Bailey said, reminding us of the impending announcement. Which he’s been involved in? “Which I’ve been involved in.”