Burberry has just released its festive film, The Tale of Thomas Burberry. And yup, you guessed it, the film chronicles the life of Burberry founder, Thomas Burberry, and takes us through the key moments  and milestones that have shaped the brand to become what it now is today. But that’s not all, it also stars Sienna Miller, who plays his first love, his second love, Betty, a woman-pilot who flew from England to Cape Town in a plane named The Burberry. His loves aside, you also get to ‘meet’ Ernest Shackleton, the explorer for whom Burberry created his first ever gaberdine fabric, which is now the brand’s signature fabric for the Trenchcoats.

Burberry’s Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Bailey, captures it best, in his own words:

This Christmas, as we celebrate our 160th anniversary we wanted to tell the story of Thomas Burberry – pioneer, inventor, innovator, and the man behind the iconic trench coat – in our own words. The film we have made is a brief glimpse inspired by his full and extraordinary life, which threaded its way through the history of the twentieth century in all its tumultuous highs and lows.

To do justice to this story, we turned to a team of truly great twenty-first century British talent: Asif Kapadia, a director whose work I admire enormously, and a cast of our brightest and our best actors: Domhnall Gleeson, Sienna Miller, Dominic West and Lily James. We feel very proud to be sharing The Tale of Thomas Burberry this Christmas – his spirit and his vision are still at the heart of everything we do at Burberry today.

Shot in England, the film, directed by Asif Kapadia, with a screenplay written by Academy-Award nominee Matt Chairman, features various stunning backdrops that were reimagined and put together from archival materials – all of which have that cinematic feel.

Asif Kapadia, comments on creating the film:

The film is the story of Thomas Burberry – it’s the story of Burberry the man, a person who created a fabric, which created the label, which has become a huge fashion brand. The idea of the film was to show where it all began.

The aim was to make a trailer for a film that we haven’t actually made. So to bring together all these epic moments of life, death, birth, love and relationships, and to go through time and to have various characters that would appear and reappear – it was about finding these epic movie moments that would then make the trailer.

The director and screenplay writer did an amazing job, don’t you think? It ain’t easy packing all those facts, and at at the same time, making it seem like a film trailer, in the short span of 3 minutes. I think it’s Burberry’s best festive film to date!

Oh, and all outerwear and accessories you see here in the film, are also immediately shoppable via Burberry boutiques worldwide, as well as on the online store

Images and video courtesy of Burberry