STYLEMAKER OF THE YEAR
CHRISTOPHER BAILEY
The story of how Bailey remade Burberry from sober purveyors of plaid into a byword of sophisticated-but-just-quirky-enough is a textbook example of what all design houses now set out to achieve. The 38-year-old designer—who draws his reference points from cult gay British director Derek Jarman one season and artist David Hockney the next—has helped turn the label into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse. Although he seems to have found new happiness after the untimely death of his longtime partner, Geert Cloet, in 2005 (“There are things you wish you had never had to learn,” he told Out in 2008), his wistful, shy persona often seems more of a piece with his rural Yorkshire upbringing than with the metropolitan world of fashion.
