Founded in 1856 by a 21-year-old draper's apprentice in Hampshire, Burberry was built on a single practical ambition: outerwear that actually moved. Thomas Burberry's 1879 invention of gabardine, a breathable, weatherproof fabric, answered a problem nobody else had thought to solve, and the trench coat that followed became a garment of genuine utility before it became an icon. A century and a half later, the Nova Check, the trench, and the broader codes of British town-and-country dressing remain the house's foundation, updated season by season for a contemporary wardrobe without losing the pedigree that made them worth keeping.

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