From Shackleton to Stardom: The History of Burberry’s Trench Coat

H ere’s an unsettling thought: where would our wardrobes be without the British obsession with the weather? If you’re the sort of person who spends too much time thinking about speculative sartorial history, the answer isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. For one, it’s possible that Burberry, now marking its 170th anniversary, and its iconic trench coat might never have come to be.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Like many fashion stories, this one begins with fabric. Or, more specifically, the lack of waterproof varieties in the mid-19th century. The dearth was enough to convince Thomas Burberry, born in 1835 in Surrey, England, to do something about it.

Following a stint as a draper’s apprentice, Burberry set up shop in Basingstoke in 1856 with the express intention of outfitting the British public against rainfall. By 1879, he had conquered the elements, developing gabardine—the first truly weatherproof cotton fabric—inspired, according to legend, by the naturally water-repellent shepherd’s smocks worn in the Hampshire countryside.

“Our founder Thomas Burberry wanted to find a breathable alternative to the airtight rainwear fabrics of the day,” says Carly Eck, Burberry’s brand curator, who oversees the company’s 25,000-item-strong archive. Compared with the alternatives available at the time—the stifling rubber used to make Macs or the heavy, waxed wool used to tailor greatcoats—gabardine proved far more effective. “His invention was revolutionary,” explains Eck. “It had microscopic spaces in the weave of the fabric which allowed for the all-important airflow.”

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to 1520 as a term for a smock-like outer garment, often made from coarse fabric. Whether it was savvy marketing or just a fitting coincidence that Burberry borrowed the name from the cloak referenced in one of Shakespeare’s plays, “The Tempest,” is open to debate. Either way, the British public would soon embrace gabardine on performance alone.

After a patent was granted in 1888, gabardine became a hit with polar explorers, who had it tailored into outerwear, trousers, hats and even tents. Burberry wrote personalized packing instructions for the most famous of them: Sir Ernest Shackleton, who gave gabardine his public seal of approval after his expeditions to Antarctica.

“Any one feeling the texture and lightness of the Burberry material would hardly believe that it answers so well in keeping out the cold and wind, and in offering, during a blizzard, complete protection against the fine drifting snow that permeates almost everything,” he wrote in “The Heart of the Antarctic” in 1909, an account of his first Antarctic expedition. Later, Shackleton even appeared in advertisements for the brand, recalling his first-hand account of how the fabric had protected a colleague from exposure.

But gabardine wasn’t just for chilly conditions. Archive records show that as early as 1893 Burberry had begun developing tropical-weight versions of the fabric, including one called “wait-a-bit gabardine”—an extra-strength hard-wearing variant, “designed for the so-called ‘wait-a-bit’ thorns of the acacia bush in South Africa,” Eck explains.

Having proven itself come rain or shine, Burberry could hardly have been surprised when the British War Office got in touch at the advent of World War I, contracting the company to create a version of its patented Tielocken coat for the forces. This custom design was to be equipped with epaulettes for attaching insignia, a storm flap to protect from runoff and D-rings for carrying ammunition, equipment and sundries—a practical solution to the miserable conditions of trench warfare.

Supplied to troops with a detachable inner warmer, the “British Trench Warm,” as its earliest iterations became known, combined the snugness of the famous “British Warm” coat with the weatherproof capabilities of Burberry’s gabardine. “It could be worn in three ways—the outer gabardine shell by itself, the liner alone, or both combined,” Eck says, adding that some industrious soldiers even used the liner as a dressing gown.

Unlike standard-issue kit, only those of officer rank and above were permitted to wear a Burberry trench coat. Plus, they had to buy it themselves out of pocket, making the coat as much a marker of status as a functional choice.

As with so many articles of clothing that transcend the battlefield—see also the bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses, field jackets—it didn’t take long for civilians to warm to the trench, too. And because they were readily available for purchase in Burberry’s expanding retail network, men, and then eventually women, began wearing the coat back home.

By the time it crossed the pond to star on the silver screen—immortalized by Humphrey Bogart on the tarmac in 1942’s “Casablanca”—the trench was fast becoming a part of fashion history. More iconic still is Audrey Hepburn’s climactic search for Cat wearing a Burberry trench in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” very much as Thomas Burberry intended: rain-soaked in a downpour.

The scene cemented the design for generations to come as a classic. “She wore it with a headscarf and a beehive hairstyle,” recalls British actor Daisy Edgar Jones, one of the stars of Burberry’s new “Trench: Portrait of an Icon” campaign, released to celebrate the 170th anniversary this year. It was her very first impression of the brand, and it stuck. “I remember seeing that and thinking it was such an iconic look.”

By the 1980s, the trench had become an almost ubiquitous silhouette, associated with the decade’s glamour and financial rallies, as epitomized by the swashbuckling, oversized version worn by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in 1987’s “Wall Street.”

By the early 2000s, Christopher Bailey had arrived, reimagining the company’s storytelling and celebrating its heritage and authenticity. As a contemporary counterpoint, he enlisted young British talent like Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson and the Beckham brothers, to showcase its century-old designs.

Today, Burberry’s Heritage collection trenches are still made in the United Kingdom. The cotton gabardine cloth is woven specially at the mill in Keighley, Yorkshire, before being stitched down the road in Castleford. “For 170 years, Burberry has evolved alongside the people who wear it. It’s always been closely connected to British life and culture,” says Daniel Lee, the brand’s creative director, who has been at the helm since 2022. “That relationship continues to influence how we think and create today.”

That much was clear in his most recent outing for the brand in February during London Fashion Week: the AW26 show saw Old Billingsgate market transformed with the backdrop of a drizzly London skyline, complete with a puddle-strewn runway. A trench coat—or deconstructed variation thereof—made an appearance in over half of the looks. Bad weather may have come first, but Burberry has long had the last word in British style.

Banner image: A shot from a 1984 Burberry campaign photographed by Lord Lichfield in the maze of Hever Castle in Kent, England. Courtesy of Burberry.