Research
Burberry £13,000 Warrior Handbag A/W 2007-08
I am currently working towards a PhD thesis on luxury clothing brand Burberry. My research question examines how 150 year old English company Burberry has emerged as such a strong leader in international markets: how has it metamorphosized from its rural craft-based origin in the mid-19th Century to become one of the world’s top five fashion brands in 2012? My journey acknowledges the enormous changes to the process of making, production, design, marketing and consumption over the past 150 years.
I am approaching the project in two distinct ways: direct analysis of archive materials held at Hampshire Museum Services, home county of the first Burberry shop in the mid-1800’s, and oral history work with former Burberry employees in Treorchy, mid-Wales, who were laid off when the company moved its production to China in 2007.
The overall aim of the project is to trace an arc of industrial history from the beginning of the company when their clothes were made by a single hand, through semi-industrialization, piece work, and finally to a post-industrial landscape. The use of archive materials has helped to trace an economic history of the company, looking specifically at the shifts and changes in production methods and labour relations over the course of company’s history.
This is a rare and poignant moment in the company’s history, when we can glimpse the past via a teenage seamstress’s diary held at the Hampshire Archive, and witness her struggle with working conditions at Burberry in an era of austerity in post WW1 Britain, and also talk to the women involved in the momentous fight to keep the Burberry production plant open in March 2007.
With the closure of the coalmines from the mid-1970’s to the 1980’s, the Rhondda Valley and this town in particular has gone through a downward spiral of underinvestment and neglect, and to a large extent, Treorchy has become part of an excluded subtext to the British narrative of capitalism, modernization and materialism. Town planning in Treorchy, where local houses surround the old Burberry factory in a double horseshoe shape, and where no-one lived more than 2 miles from work, meant that the impact of redundancies was felt by the whole town, as there is quite literally nowhere to absorb it. Job losses amounting to 309, in a population of 2,000 is felt economically and socially by every resident.
Treorchy has a long and proud history of working with fabrics, fashion and apparel, since Polikoff’s manufacturing base opened in the town at the beginning of the 20th Century. Now the factory is closed and the sewing machines were sold in bulk, but sadly not to the women who requested to buy their own machines. The site remains closed save for the 24 hour security guards, and is filled with old television sets.
I was a fortunate recipient of the Crafts Council Spark Plug curator award in 2009, so I have been able to work with some of the ex-Burberry employees in Treorchy on a project called Can Craft Make You Happy?
Although the Spark Plug award has come to an end, the work in Treorchy continues as above all, this struggle has politicized the women and, for them, the Burberry brand has forced them to re-think their position to fashion, fabrics and identity, and the struggle has become inextricably linked to the fabric itself.
