4. BURBERRY

Penny Martin
Friday 05 September 2008 08:20 EDT
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Following the misguided, youthful exuberance of the spring/summer 2008 campaign, when Burberry and Agyness Deyn "went colour", the English brand has reverted to monochrome this season. But need they have done so with quite so little vigour?

Cast your mind back to those black-and-white campaigns featuring Stella Tennant in 1998, when Mario Testino and stylist Carine Roitfeld (now editor of French Vogue) were first appointed to create a photographic language for the Burberry rebrand. Those shots radiated power, both in the hauteur of Tennant's on-camera performance and in the richness of Testino's palette. This new campaign fades into an insipid backdrop by comparison.

Actor Sam Riley's working-class features make a welcome change from the usual society faces. Riley's best-known role so far is as Ian Curtis in Anton Corbijn's 2007 film Control. Christopher Bailey's autumn Burberry collection was, he said, based on the work of L S Lowry, whose Salford scenes aren't such a stretch from Curtis's Macclesfield hometown. There's a missed opportunity for this tired campaign format: remove the Burberry-clad aristos from the countryside and put them on the streets of Lancashire!

Verdict: the grandeur has faded

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