Burberry Blues

I've been seeing more and more glamorous people sporting the iconic Burberry (LON: BRBY) plaid pattern lately in and about town, and it's gotten me wondering if Burberry isn't in the early stages of a full-scale comeback.

Why was I so bearish on Burberry? I saw the fall of the fabled marque in the late nineties; what I witnessed is summed up well by the Wall Street Journal: "Plaid overexposure. In recent years, the company attached its plaid to too many products and its brand image slid, with even British soccer hooligans wearing it. Exacerbating the problem were counterfeit goods."

During some research on the famed British marque, I found that Burberry is currently taking London Fog parent Iconix Brand Group (NASDAQ: ICON) to court over use of its check pattern used in coats and scarves. Burberry developed the trench coat on a commission from the British War Office in 1914, and first used the famous patented check to line its trench coats in the 1920s. London Fog likewise has been using its own similar check pattern to line trench coats since the 20s, so this puts Burberry in a tight position to explain why they didn't fight it out in the courtroom, say, 80 years ago. We'll see how it plays out.



Via Counterfeit Chic