Christopher Bailey trained at the Royal College of Art, completing an MA in 1994, then joined Donna Karan in New York as a womenswear designer from 1994 to 1996. In 1996, he relocated to Milan as senior womenswear designer at Gucci, working under Tom Ford through 2001, the period that shaped his approach to proportion, leather, and a Continental commercial sensibility.

Bailey’s signature pulls at the seams of British outerwear, the gabardine trench, the check lining, knit capes, and shearling-trimmed parkas, treated as a working wardrobe.

He joined Burberry in May 2001 as design director under chief executive Rose Marie Bravo, ascending to creative director in 2004, and chief creative officer in November 2009.

On the runway, the trench coat returned in python, lace, shearling, and patent, the nova check was inverted across blanket capes and oversized scarves, and the Heritage line codified three trench cuts in classic gabardine.

Against contemporaries like Phoebe Philo at Celine, Bailey staked Burberry on outerwear as house DNA, taking the British Fashion Awards Designer of the Year in 2005 and 2009, Menswear Designer of the Year in 2007 and 2008, and the CFDA International Award in 2010.

Bailey added chief executive officer to his title in May 2014 following Angela Ahrendts’s departure for Apple, then relinquished the CEO seat to Marco Gobbetti in July 2017.

He announced his exit in October 2017 and presented his final Burberry collection in February 2018, departing the company that December, with Riccardo Tisci succeeding him as chief creative officer. That last show recast the house check in rainbow stripes across capes, scarves, and the trench, dedicated to LGBTQ+ youth charities.

Since, Bailey has remained between houses, his Burberry tenure standing as the case study in scaling a British outerwear label to roughly £2.5 billion in annual revenue through the discipline of the trench and the check.