Burberry always has something special up its sleeve in conjunction with Fashion Week. This time around, it’s a major photography exhibit entitled Here We Are, featuring over 200 works by over 30 of the twentieth centre’s most celebrated social and documentary photographers, including Dafydd Jones, Bill Brandt, Brian Griffin, Shirley Baker, Jane Brown, Martin Parr, Jo Spence, Ken Russell, Charlie Phillips, Karen Knot, Janette Beckman and Andy Sewell. The exhibit, curated by Burberry’s President and Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey,  writer and curator Lucy Kumara Moore, and co-curated by Alasdair McLellan will be held from 18 September to 1 October 2017, at Burberry’s new show venue, Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell.

Martin Parr, O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, Ireland, October 1981 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos / Rocket Gallery

So how does this all tie in with the upcoming immediately shoppable September Collection that will be presented? Yup you guessed it, the collection is indeed inspired by British social portraiture, as a

celebra[tion of] a certain strand of British photography that I have always loved — one which documents the many and varied tribes and clans and classes that make up this island of ours.
It has been an extraordinary privilege to gather together this collection of photographs, that have influenced me so much over the years. They provide a portrait of British life, in all its nuances, both exceptional and mundane, beautiful and harsh.

It’s the spirit of those photographs — sometimes ironic, sometimes tender, always truthful — that has guided our september collection. Together they will form an exhibition in our new show space, celebrating a very British way of life and dressing.

– Christopher Bailey-