To tour the Burberry flagship store on London’s Regent Street, with its beautifully stacked clothes, its “magic mirrors” that illuminate with runway images, its signs in Arabic for Gulf tourists, and its “VVIP” room on the top floor, is to enter as sweet a world as Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
Its Wonka is Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s chief creative officer, and designer of all the contents, including a £70,000 “limited edition” white alligator skin jacket. His theatre of luxury is a few notches up the price scale from the Apple store on Regent Street, outside which a queue formed on Wednesday for the iPhone 5s, but they are related.
The appointment of Angela Ahrendts, Burberry’s chief executive, as the head of Apple’s online and retail stores, is proof of that. Ron Johnson, the man who created Apple’s highly successful shops, failed spectacularly when he moved from computers to clothing, trying to work Apple’s magic on JC Penney, the US department store. She is moving the other way.