<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  In Britain, one of the best compliments to receive is &amp;quot;You haven&amp;#039;t changed.&amp;quot; For our American readers, that doesn&amp;#039;t mean you&amp;#039;ve maintained your dewy skin or size 6 body. Rather, it means that great success hasn&amp;#039;t spoiled you with an air of pretension or turned you into an insufferable diva. And it&amp;#039;s one I&amp;#039;d offer without a second&amp;#039;s hesitation to Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey. Christopher is exactly as dear, sincere, and charming today as he was when I first had tea with him 10 years ago, shortly after he&amp;#039;d arrived from Gucci, at London&amp;#039;s Lanesborough hotel after Burberry&amp;#039;s then\u2014chief executive, Rose Marie Bravo, asked me to meet with him. I remember an hour flew by like it was five minutes; it always does. That&amp;#039;s a real tribute to his engaging, charismatic manner. He&amp;#039;s interested and interesting, which makes it so easy to both love and respect him. And respect him greatly we all do. Many cups of tea later, he&amp;#039;s transformed Burberry into a powerhouse that somehow stays true to its heritage and revered place in British culture but also has its sights squarely on the future. And that&amp;#039;s all while overseeing the design of up to 50 collections a year.  In many ways, Burberry, a quintessentially English brand that we all grew up with, is the perfect place for the boy from Yorkshire who still goes back to see his family as often as he can. But Christopher&amp;#039;s got passion, and he&amp;#039;s not afraid to work hard. I have a feeling he&amp;#039;d be successful wherever he was. He might be down-to-earth, but even with his feet firmly on the ground, his sheer talent enables him to reach new heights. Our conversation follows.  Glenda Bailey: You&amp;#039;ve been at Burberry for 10 years. Do you feel it&amp;#039;s gone by so quickly? Christopher Bailey: I feel like it&amp;#039;s about two years and I&amp;#039;m still the new kid, like there&amp;#039;s more to do today than 10 years ago. GB: I can&amp;#039;t get over the fact that you started at Burberry when you were only 29. CB: Which makes me even closer to 40. Or 40. [Laughs.] GB: It&amp;#039;s more to do with what a child genius you were. CB: When I think back, I realize how young I was, but I think there was such magic with this company that I felt like all I had to do was have fun and keep the energy that existed long before I ever joined. GB: But when you came in, it had sort of lost its way. I&amp;#039;ve just been looking at these figures, and you&amp;#039;ve really turned revenues around, from \u00A3425 million [around $602 million] in 2001 to \u00A31.5 billion [around $2.4 billion] today. CB: Oh, gosh, you&amp;#039;ve got all the figures! GB: What was the defining moment? CB: It was really when I was first approached. I never actually considered Burberry because it was so on my doorstep. So it was a bit of a lightbulb moment when I realized that there was so much potential in the company because of its heritage.  GB: What makes working for a British label different? CB: We&amp;#039;ve got our own DNA. I describe it as disheveled elegance, this beautiful craftsmanship with something a bit broken up. That&amp;#039;s very close to my personal view on design. That&amp;#039;s probably what is different. American fashion is much more glossy. GB: What made you choose Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as one of the faces of the brand? CB: I love her warmth and strength and vulnerability. She has a real point of view. She&amp;#039;s the most fun to hang out with and the most professional and fun to work with. GB: And Kate Moss? CB: Kate is Kate. She has become this British icon who is defined by her own style. She knows exactly what she wants and what she likes. That&amp;#039;s a different side of Britishness, and it&amp;#039;s the same with someone like Stella Tennant, who has this incredible lineage and elegance. I think she&amp;#039;s always spent her Christmases at Chatsworth House [home of the Duke of Devonshire]. Cara Delevingne, who I adore as well, is the same. GB: Who&amp;#039;s the girl who just makes your toes curl up? CB: Gosh, they all do for completely different reasons. Emma Watson is such a good and kind person. Every time I see her, it&amp;#039;s a giggle to talk about the stuff we&amp;#039;ve done together. I&amp;#039;ve got special times with all of them and continue to. They become part of your life. GB: Do you personally use Facebook and Twitter? CB: I do! People always think I don&amp;#039;t. The funny thing is, I&amp;#039;m active on Facebook and Twitter professionally, then personally I have my own Facebook account, but nobody knows my name or anything. I don&amp;#039;t use it to connect with my friends, but I love to play on it.  Face time: Bailey muse Cara Delevingne starred in last fall&amp;#039;s campaign and opened and closed the Spring 2012 show. Clothing and accessories throughout, Burberry Prorsum. burberry.com.  Photo by David Bailey.  Hats off to the next 10 years. Hair: Gianni Scumani at gianniscumani.com for Jocio Design Collection; makeup: Valeria Ferreira for Burberry Beauty. Photo by David Bailey. GB: Are you an iPhone or BlackBerry user? CB: I used to be BlackBerry, then I became BlackBerry and iPhone, and now I&amp;#039;m iPhone. GB: I heard that you were trying to get your nephew and niece to stop using their iPhones at dinner. CB: Whenever I&amp;#039;m home in Yorkshire, the whole family has dinner together, and my niece and nephew are obsessed. That whole generation is. They&amp;#039;re 15, 16. They literally live on their mobile devices. Sometimes I have to say, &amp;quot;Guys, can you just stop and have a conversation?&amp;quot; But it&amp;#039;s the way it is. GB: I know that you write notes, which is so charming for somebody who clearly loves technology. Do you keep notes? CB: I&amp;#039;ve got all the notes I&amp;#039;ve ever received. There are traditionalists, and there are people in the middle, which is where I am. I still get my newspaper delivered. I love the ritual of it. But I also jump into the cab when I leave home and I look at some BBC on my iPad. GB: I&amp;#039;m so impressed with the way Burberry&amp;#039;s introduced a technological sea change in fashion. I mean, I can choose a bag from the runway and have it delivered in eight weeks. How did that come about? CB: I guess it was instinct. If you&amp;#039;re going to live stream a show, suddenly it&amp;#039;s not only the industry that you&amp;#039;re inviting. So you can&amp;#039;t say, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re inviting you into the show, but, FYI, you&amp;#039;ve got to stick to our industry timetables.&amp;quot; GB: You did the show in China in April, and you had six models, but holograms for the rest. How did that work? CB: We had to shoot all the holograms here in London. Then we took over a Beijing TV studio and basically covered the walls and ceilings with screens so you had no idea what was real and what was not. The message was that there is a blurring between the physical and the digital. Fashion now is much more than product. It&amp;#039;s about entertainment and people feeling a part of something. GB: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? CB: A vet, but I wasn&amp;#039;t academic enough. My second choice was an architect. My father was a carpenter, so I loved the idea of making things. I was a bit of a lost soul. Then my art teacher sent some of my drawings off to a couple of art schools. I always wound up in the fashion department, but I really knew nothing about fashion. I didn&amp;#039;t even know any designers. GB: Do you have any favorite fashion designers today? CB: I&amp;#039;m a huge supporter of all the young British designers here. I&amp;#039;m a big fan of Christopher Kane. GB: Of course, you were discovered by Donna Karan. CB: Yes. I ended up, quite by accident, doing my M.A. at the Royal College of Art. Donna came in and saw my portfolio and asked to meet me. I was just completely seduced by this incredible woman who had a way of approaching design that just blew me away. Then she asked me to join her in New York when I finished school [in 1994]. GB: What was she like to work for? CB: Unbelievable. She taught me how to use my eyes. I find it funny that Donna&amp;#039;s known as the queen of black. She has the most sophisticated color sense of anybody I&amp;#039;ve met. GB: What did you learn from Tom Ford at Gucci? CB: A huge amount. His world is very glamorous. Tom lives the life he portrays. He opened that up to me, and though that world still is quite alien to me, it showed me another approach. When he offered me a job, he said, &amp;quot;Where do you want to live?&amp;quot; I was in New York. He said, &amp;quot;Do you want to live in New York? Paris? Milan? Florence? L.A.?&amp;quot; GB: He&amp;#039;s so seductive. I mean, he clearly offered you the world. Was he cross when you left in 2001? CB: He was sad. We&amp;#039;d been through a lot. But he was incredible. He said, &amp;quot;Let me know who you want to work for, and I&amp;#039;ll call them.&amp;quot; But I felt I needed a change, though what I wanted was something very intimate. I certainly wasn&amp;#039;t planning on a big job at Burberry. It just happened. GB: Can you sum up one thing that Tom taught you? CB: To stick with your gut instinct. GB: Is there anybody you&amp;#039;ve met who truly amazed you? CB: David Hockney. That was pretty powerful. I grew up slightly idolizing him. He&amp;#039;s from Bradford, around the corner from where I&amp;#039;m from. I grew up going to Salts Mill, his permanent exhibition near there. It was surreal but quite nerve-racking. And I rarely get nervous about meeting anybody. GB: What did he say? CB: He had a good rant about how you should be allowed to smoke. He was very un-PC, and I just adored him. GB: I totally get that. Have you met the queen? CB: I have. She&amp;#039;s quite something. What always strikes me is how beautiful her skin is. GB: What do you think she carries in that bag of hers? CB: I wouldn&amp;#039;t have a guess. I don&amp;#039;t suspect much other than a little hankie and maybe a dab of perfume. GB: Have you met Kate Middleton? CB: No, but she&amp;#039;s beautiful and an amazing ambassador. GB: If I were able to say, &amp;quot;Christopher, I can introduce you to whomever you like,&amp;quot; who would it be? CB: I would have loved to formally meet Lucian Freud. Sadly, that won&amp;#039;t happen. GB: I used to hang out at the Wolseley [where Freud was a regular] every night, you know, with my hair flicking. CB: Didn&amp;#039;t we all, Glenda? GB: I used to think, Tonight is the night! But it never was. Tell me about your favorite books and films. CB: I love all the Bloomsbury set: the biographies on [Roger] Fry and Virginia [Woolf] and [Vanessa] Bell. I love Christopher Isherwood\u2014The Berlin Stories. My favorite film is Educating Rita. Actually, anything with Julie Walters is my favorite. GB: Since you have incredible taste in music, what&amp;#039;s the latest thing we should be listening to? CB: I love the Kooks. I love Wolfman. I love the Feeling. They are just so incredibly talented. GB: What do you dream about? CB: Oh, gosh, I don&amp;#039;t know. I guess generally about quite surreal situations with family and friends. I dream a lot, but I don&amp;#039;t know if it has much sense in real life. GB: Is that because you don&amp;#039;t sleep enough? CB: Oh, no, I&amp;#039;m quite good at getting as much sleep as I can. I love eight hours. GB: And, last question, if you were to meet you at a party, what would you think? CB: I would probably think, Oh, he doesn&amp;#039;t stay very long. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a842/christopher-bailey-interview-1211/>