It is widely assumed that class is a purely British obsession. Riccardo Tisci, appointed chief creative officer of Burberry in March last year, disagrees. “It exists everywhere, baby,” he laughs. As a young boy of southern-Italian heritage, raised in the north of that country, it’s fair to say he has a deeper understanding of such things than many. At school, he and his siblings were labelled “terrone”, a term used by prosperous northerners to describe those from the less-affluent south, literally translating as ‘people of the earth’. Such distinctions, couched geographically in Britain’s own north-south divide, are in Italy simply reversed. Still, “here, people see it more”, Tisci concedes. “It’s a look. You have punks, you have skinheads, you have the aristocracy, you have the Queen, who I love. It’s my dream to meet her. Did you see she wore the scarf?” He means a Burberry scarf, and she did indeed, stepping off the train for her annual Christmas break at Sandringham in December sporting that very accessory – checked no less – and looking especially fine. “Class is everywhere,” Tisci argues. “It’s in India, in China…” Read more at Another.
