2025 has been Burberry’s year. Not just anecdotally, but culturally. The brand returned to the Lyst Index of hottest brands in Q2 2025 at position 17, before climbing to 13 in Q3, placing it back among the world’s most relevant fashion brands based on search, sales, and social engagement. This shift did not happen by chance.

2025 has been the year to talk about Burberry’s strategic reset. The brand’s narrative now looks fundamentally different from how it entered last year. What began as a period of survival and stabilising performance after years of brand instability has evolved into leverage. Strategic clarity is now starting to translate into commercial potential, positioning 2026 as a decisive year.

As highlighted in the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2026, brand transformations rarely pay off at the moment perception shifts. They pay off one cycle later, when clarity begins converting into revenue. For Burberry, that timing is critical.

For the brand, 2025 marked the perception reset while 2026 is the monetisation phase. Over the past 18 months, Burberry has rebuilt its foundations around brand clarity and cultural relevance. That reset has begun to unlock pricing power, better sell-through, and stronger lifetime value, particularly among Gen Z and Millennial consumers. What matters now is execution.

What the data shows

From a data perspective, Burberry’s turnaround appears first in how demand behaves, not just in revenue.

Google search interest tells a clear story. In 2024, brand interest grew by 4 percent year on year. In 2025, that growth accelerated to 10 percent.

The contrast with peers is telling. Ralph Lauren also had 10 percent growth in 2025, after a 29 percent increase in 2024, meaning overall attention decelerated year on year. Michael Kors declined by 5 percent in 2025, while Alexander McQueen dropped 27 percent. Burberry stands out as the only brand combining volume with accelerating demand, ranking first among peers in absolute search growth.

This matters because Burberry’s momentum is not driven by market recovery, but by differentiation in a declining luxury market.

Why the 2025 reset was unavoidable

Burberry cycled through five CEOs in a decade, creating strategic drift and weakening emotional connection with its audience.

Between 2021 and mid 2024, under Jonathan Akeroyd, Burberry pursued a strategy aimed at pushing the brand further into high luxury. The approach leaned heavily into fashion-led categories (the feared micro trends), selective distribution and price increases, with the ambition of repositioning Burberry alongside the very top tier of luxury houses.

In a declining luxury market, this proved mistimed. Burberry lost momentum in key regions, particularly China, while aspirational consumers became more price sensitive and brand demand softened.

This tension showed up clearly in performance. The share price declined materially over Akeroyd’s tenure, reflecting growing scepticism around the strategy. For FY24, Burberry reported approximately £2.97 billion in revenue (-4 percent vs 2023), with continued pressure on retail sales and uncontrolled decline.

The problem in 2024

By 2024, the core challenge had become clarity. Heritage without relevance had produced indifference, the most dangerous outcome in luxury. Demand decline, excess inventory, rising fixed costs and declining cultural relevance accelerated the problem.

To redirect this, Joshua Schulman was appointed CEO in July 2024, marking a decisive break from the past. His mandate was explicit: restore brand clarity before chasing growth and reconnect Burberry to its British roots.

The central strategic question was simple but fundamental: How do you turn Britishness into a language the world understands?

Britishness as a global system

Under Schulman and Creative Director Daniel Lee, Burberry stopped trying to be everything at once and doubled down on what it already owned.

Outerwear and scarves were re-established as core categories. Weather, function and realism became the product narrative. British understatement, humour and everyday culture became the brand language.

This became a translation exercise. Britishness shifted from static symbolism into lived experience, expressed through products that work in real life and campaigns that travel across cultures.

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2025 in practice: The strategy in a timeline

The strategy materialised progressively through 2025.

In Q1, Burberry focused on stabilisation. The company announced plans to cut up to 1,700 jobs globally as part of a cost reduction programme designed to restore discipline and protect margins. The campaign It’s Always Burberry Weather, London in Love, alongside the Winter 25 show at Tate Britain, marked a visible break from the past, driving the strongest brand love scores since FY19 and the highest brand affinity since FY22. Importantly, wholesale partners who had previously pulled back began to re engage.

The brand starts doubling down on its core products: the trench and the scarf. And results across the year are fantastic:

In Q2 and Q3, culture took over. Product strategy followed the same logic of simplification, with a renewed good better best pricing architecture.The brand starts doubling down on its core products: the trench and the scarf. And results across the year are fantastic:

At the same time, Burberry launched its festival focused campaign, showing up in muddy fields and rain soaked realities. Wellies, scarves and functional outerwear drove the strongest sales performance in eighteen months. For Gen Z, luxury was reframed around energy, identity and participation.

In Q3, internal discipline became a supporting pillar. Wholesale revenue declined sharply as Burberry exited lower quality European doors, repositioning wholesale as a brand amplifier rather than a volume channel. In retail and ecommerce, the focus shifted from footprint expansion to productivity, supported by visual merchandising upgrades and the rollout of around 200 scarf bars globally. Ecommerce returned to growth in the second half after three years of decline.

By Q4, social proof accelerated demand, mini TV shows on weather featuring Lucky Blue Smith or Olivia Colman. Lifestyle content and organic cultural moments embedded Burberry beyond seasonal fashion cycles and into everyday relevance.

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