I mean, plaids do have a tendency to shout, “Look at me!”
Case in point: the Burberry Store on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. There’s no missing this rad plaid fashion statement!
No way could the ample assets of Burberry’s nearby sisters (including yours truly) get by with such a loud declaration of runway arrogance; at least not with the elegance and essence of Englishness befitting a company with royal connections (Burberry was awarded a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen in 1955, which essentially allows the London based company to do a little name dropping when it comes to their esteemed customers).
Despite my aversion to plaid (so sad!), my fashion needs didn’t preclude me from noticing Mag Mile’s newest addition to Chicago's Gold Coast (the five-story, 25,000 square foot beautifully-wrapped-gift-box of a building was squeezed into the former two-story predecessor on the northeast corner of Michigan and Ontario) during a recent trip to the city; nor did my fashion needs preclude me from appreciating Burberry's fine plaid features, on the diagonal no less.
Burberry’s dark-knight fortress, which opened last November, seemed to relish the idea that plaid is bad, as in good. What’s not to like about the bling of that famous Tartan check. Bling is a girl's best friend. The prominent display of those glossy geometric lines on those dark planes speaks to the magic and mystery behind this fashion icon with humble origins in the lining of Thomas Burberry’s virtually indestructible water-resistent outdoor wear, including his famous trench coat.
The very same coat that made it all the way to the South Pole in 1911 with the first gentleman to achieve such status, Norweigan explorer Captain Roald Amundsen; the same coat (well, not the exact same coat, just another coat off the rack) that made the first non-stop flight crossed the Atlantic with Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown in 1919.
That trendy trench coat of World War II fame was as much a part of Humphrey Bogart’s bad ass character of Casablanca fame in 1942 as was his parting line to one classy lady: “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
My sentiments exactly; here’s looking at you, Burberry!