Burberry Prorsum Collection Debuts With Eight Fragrances at 295 Euros

By Daniel Okafor

Coty launches the Burberry Prorsum Collection, an eight-fragrance line priced at 295 euros for 100 ml., on November 2 in select Burberry stores, the brand's online platform and Selfridges in the U.K. Industry sources estimate the line will generate 20 million euros in first-year retail sales. Coty declined to comment on projections.

The collection is Burberry's highest-end perfume line. It arrives during the fashion house's 170th anniversary year. The name comes from Burberry's motto, meaning "forward" in Latin.

"The way that it has been conceived is almost to mimic what would be the olfactive texture of the check," said Jean Holtzmann, chief brands officer of Coty Prestige. "So it's about bringing tension, brightness and a form of energy in it."

How the 'raker' works

Each fragrance carries three signature olfactive notes plus one "raker" — a fourth accord that cuts through the composition, echoing the red line intersecting Burberry's camel, black and white check.

Burberry is a core pillar of Coty Inc.'s prestige portfolio, which holds the brand's fragrance and beauty license. Over the past seven years, Burberry climbed from 29th to 15th among prestige fragrance brands, according to Circana.

"For us, it was very important to continue the journey," Holtzmann said. "From the fashion angle, there has been tremendous work under Joshua Schulman's leadership in order to transform the brand. We felt that now is the right moment to come back with a proposal and a story [that] is meant to be the apex of the brand."

The team mined Burberry's archives back to Thomas Burberry, who founded the house in 1856. Each perfumer chose a Burberry-related story seen through the founder's lens. Thomas Burberry equipped people for wild adventures, and that vision informed the collection.

"This collection is meant to be the highest in terms of craftsmanship, olfactive design — but also almost the most concentrated view on Burberry," Holtzmann said.

What is in the lineup?

• Garden Rain — Givaudan perfumer Caroline Sabas built a violet accord with spearmint extract and a driftwood accord; the earthy petrichor accord serves as the raker. "My fragrance was inspired by the gardens of Thomas Burberry," Sabas said. "I imagine him walking through his gardens after a rainy summer day."
• Open Skies — Mane's Violaine Collas conjures the British countryside's skyscape with a salty mineral accord, ivy accord and fir balsam absolute. A vegetal accord is the raker.
• Gabardine — Givaudan's Nisrine Grillié and Yann Vasnier reference the world's first breathable, waterproof fabric, used in the trenchcoat. It combines gabardine headspace, jasmine sambac absolute and chalky musks, with white cedarwood as the raker.
• Cashmere Embrace — the same Givaudan duo pairs a cashmere accord, ginger oil and sandalwood oil; a sandy vetiver accord is the raker.
• London — by Mane's Mathieu Nardin.
• Kensington Trench — by IFF's Meabh McCurtin.
• Kight — by IFF's Tanguy Guesnet.
• Est. 1856 — by Firmenich's Florian Gallo.

Sabas said working within the collection's structure "was very cool, because it's something that was not really done before. When you have three very structured ingredients usually you have facets around it. But here to have this raker accord made it quite unique."

What does the launch change for Coty?

It gives the licensor a top-tier collector proposition in a category with rising demand. "There is a growing appetite," Holtzmann said, pointing to increasing interest in perfume ingredients and perfumers themselves. "There is an appetite for the expertise behind fragrance."

Bottles carry the Burberry check carved into the glass, each topped with a different color cap emblazoned with the Burberry knight. Outer boxes feature a tonal check. The 50-ml. eau de parfum costs 195 euros.

After the U.K. launch, a tight-distribution global rollout follows in the U.S., the rest of Europe and the Middle East, then Asia. "The first eight fragrances are planting flags in certain ideas of Britishness," Holtzmann said. "But we want to continue to explore, because there are so many stories."