How Burberry's Check Pattern Went from Lining to Icon to Problem and Back

Thomas Burberry founded his company in Basingstoke in 1856. His invention of gabardine in 1879 was the breakthrough. The now-famous check, a camel, black, red, and white tartan, was introduced in the 1920s as a discreet trench coat lining visible only when the coat was open.

For decades the check remained an insider's detail. Its first exterior move came in the 1960s on umbrellas and scarves. By the 1980s, Burberry had licensed the check aggressively across product categories, generating revenue but diluting exclusivity.

The 1990s brought crisis. In Britain the pattern was adopted by football hooligans and associated with a 'chav' subculture. Tabloid photographs of public figures in head-to-toe check at unseemly moments went viral. The brand's association with British elegance was in genuine jeopardy.

Rehabilitation began with Rose Marie Bravo as CEO in 1997 and Christopher Bailey as creative director in 2001. Bravo curtailed licensing, Bailey reintroduced the check selectively. A Regent Street flagship signalled a new chapter (https://www.burberry.com).

The trench itself never left Britain. Burberry weaves its gabardine at a mill in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and makes the heritage trench coats at a factory in Castleford, where a single coat passes through dozens of hands. That is the part of the business the check troubles never reached, and it is why the trench survived a decade in which the pattern itself was toxic.

Every detail on a heritage trench is inherited from the trenches. The storm shield across the right shoulder let rain run clear of a shouldered rifle. The D-rings on the belt carried map cases and equipment. The raglan sleeve allowed movement under a pack, the throat latch closed the collar against wind, and the gun flap and epaulettes did what their names say. The Kensington, Chelsea, Waterloo and Westminster differ in length and cut, not in this vocabulary.

Under successive creative directors, the check has been reimagined with new colourways and scales. The Thomas Burberry Monogram was introduced alongside the classic check, giving the brand a dual visual identity for different customer segments.

The journey is a case study in brand management. A pattern is not inherently valuable; meaning is constructed by context and scarcity. When the check was everywhere it meant nothing. Rare and carefully deployed, it regained power. The lesson applies far beyond fashion.

Fakes are common enough that the check is worth checking. On a genuine coat the pattern lines up across the seams and around the collar, the horn-look buttons are engraved rather than moulded, and the lining is stitched rather than glued at the hem. A heritage Kensington now costs comfortably over £1,500, and the sensible alternative below that is not a cheaper Burberry but a Mackintosh or an Aquascutum, which staked its own claim to the trench in the same period.

For the man considering Burberry, the safest entry remains the trench coat where the check appears as lining. A Kensington in honey gabardine, with check visible only at the collar, is one of menswear's most enduring outerwear investments. Let the check whisper rather than shout.