For 18 months Burberry hasn’t been able to put a number on how much Riccardo Tisci is worth to the business (Ashley Armstrong writes). Certainly not its new chief designer’s pay packet — how gauche to ask. Instead, the luxury brand is mildly obsessed with Mr Tisci’s “lucky number” — 17. His catwalk collections start on the 17th of the month and on the 17th hour of the day. While it waits for the Italian’s designs to filter down from the catwalk to its boutiques, the trenchcoat maker has had to sell its strategy on a much more tenuous promise of Mr Tisci’s “brand heat”.
Burberry was founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry, a draper who invented the gabardine waterproof material still used in its