The Burberry trench coat is one of the very few garments permanently embedded in menswear. It has been worn by soldiers, detectives, film actors, and heads of state. It has appeared on every runway worth watching and in every wardrobe worth admiring. Now, to mark 170 years of the brand, Burberry has made the trench coat itself the subject.
The campaign, titled The Trench: Portraits of an Icon, was created in collaboration with photographer Tim Walker and shot entirely in black and white. Twenty-three figures from film, music, sport, and fashion were photographed individually, each image treating the trench not as a product but as a cultural object with its own story to tell. Alongside the portraits, Burberry released a short documentary film set to a Blur soundtrack, capturing unscripted moments between the cast and crew during the shoot. It is the kind of campaign that earns attention well beyond the usual fashion press cycle.
From changing style to reinventing it
For men, the trench coat has always occupied a specific register. It is serious without being sombre, dressed up without requiring effort, and quintessentially British without tipping into cliché. The Burberry trench carries its own particular weight of history. The double-breasted silhouette, the storm flap, the D-ring belt, and the signature check lining have remained essentially unchanged since their introduction, because no compelling argument to change them has ever materialised.
The timing is not incidental. The trench coat is already having a significant cultural moment, driven by two converging forces: a renewed interest in late-1980s and early-1990s East Coast American style, and a broader shift in menswear toward deliberate, investment-led dressing. The Burberry trench sits at the centre of both. It is an unambiguous quality piece with a clear heritage story, and it works as well beneath a suit as it does thrown over denim.
At £1,990 for the Heritage Trench in cotton gabardine, it is a considerable outlay. But as the campaign itself implicitly argues, this is a coat with 170 years of proven use behind it. Very few things in a man’s wardrobe can make that claim.
