Burberry Paints Culturally-Significant Landscapes With Its Iconic Check Print
Burberry is painting the town in Check. The fashion brand is expanding its Burberry Landscape initiative, with local artists planting the famous print over open areas. With eco-friendly paint, of course.
Its latest project pays homage to Elsie Burberry, the daughter-in-law of the brand’s founder, Thomas Burberry, and Betty Kirby-Green.
Kirby-Green was an aviator who conducted expeditions from Britain to the Canary Islands and South Africa. And that’s exactly where Burberry has decided to paint over.
The first location is out in the Canary Islands under the watchful eye of the imposing El Hierro volcano. Burberry employed the services of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, a Cuban-American contemporary artist, who shrouded the land in the quintessential print, making it look almost like a blanket has covered the area.
Rodrigues-Gerada used natural milk-based paint to wash away the wind and local water sources.
El Hierro’s Environmental Department approved the project before its inception and is also monitoring it to ensure no damage is done to the environment.
The artist explains that coming up with the paint felt like alchemy since it was created out of minerals. Each combination of colors and materials created a new hue that he could not predict would work on the environment.
In the second location in South Africa, the Check can be found sprawled over a meadow in the Western Cape. The area is significant to the brand as that is where Kirby-Green and flying officer Arther Clouston landed the Burberry plane in 1973.
A local green team took to hand planting the meadow with African Daisies and Helichrysum Petiolare, which attract birds and bees to pollinate the area.
