Two attendees, including model Cara Delevigne, pose with copies of Orlando (image via Elle.com).
Burberry’s newest fall collection was inspired by Woolf’s novel Orlando, and the author’s presence was undeniable at the launch of the collection at London Fashion Week.
The luxury British fashion brand held a runway show last week which channeled the historical, fantastic, and androgynous aspects of Orlando, and, as Elle.com states, “pushed further into the future by showing a collection that was almost entirely unisex—and giving the entire cast the same makeup look, regardless of gender.”
Many famous fashion editors, models, and celebrities attended the launch of the collection at “Makers House,” which Fiona Sinclair Scott at CNN Style describes as, “an old bookshop in London’s Soho area” which was transformed into a space where people could “watch the show and explore an exhibition of artisans and craftspeople — including saddlers, embroiderers, scentmakers and bookbinders.”
A few looks from Burberry’s Orlando inspired collection (image from the Los Angeles Times).
Writer Fiona Sinclair Scott, who attended the event and documented it on Instagram, wrote this about the show and about Christopher Bailey, the Chief Creative Officer and CEO of Burberry:
A copy of ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf was left for each guest on the pale pink fabric-covered benches. Widely regarded as one of Woolf’s more popular and accessible reads, the novel’s protagonist is born into the body of a man but later transforms into a woman, living some 300 years into modern times. Neither time nor gender could stop Woolf’s story and it seems the same now applies to Bailey.
A copy of Orlando was given to each guest (information and photo from Fiona Sinclair Scott at Instagram).
On Wednesday, September 21st, Burberry hosted a live reading of Woolf’s Orlando which included such celebrities as British actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Dame Eileen Atkins, and Dame Sian Phillips:
Dame Sian Phillips reading from chapter one of Woolf’s Orlando at Burberry’s “Maker’s House” (image from Pin Drop at Twitter).
You can watch the entire 2016 Burberry show on YouTube (see below), or you can view the collection at uk.burberry.com.
According to publicity materials: “This performance shows us Orlando in the present, in her “here” and “now” just before her end. In such a time, she tells us of the greatest moments of her life in her ultimate endeavor to achieve human contact. Through the process of recollection, she faces her most extreme experiences, at times earthly and natural and at others transcendental. She begins her narration from the start, as we always do when facing death or the unknown.”
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