Last season it was all midsummer fields and festival mud and that very pastoral idea of Britain. This season? Daniel Lee yanked Burberry straight into midwinter, after-dark London. Cold air. Glossy streets. The kind of night where everything feels a little sharper. The brand that’s been defined forever by the grid of its Nova check is now sketching something much more direct, much more graphic—not just in clothes, but in how it stages itself.

Tonight’s show was slick. Like, literally slick. Latex “puddles” shimmered on the runway, and by the finale, the lights on a scaffolded version of Tower Bridge were pulsing so dramatically they made the real thing—right there across the river from Burberry’s Old Billingsgate—look almost shy. Backstage, Lee got reflective. He talked about arriving in London as a student, living in Whitechapel, feeling homesick, and walking along the Thames to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London just to feel grounded again. “I was excited just to be here,” he said. Which feels… very real. Very London.

The goal this season was a proper Burberry day-to-night wardrobe. Clothes that don’t panic when plans change. “It could be a film premiere, or a charity gala,” Lee said. “It might be a nightclub.” Because London nights are like that—unpredictable, layered, slightly chaotic. There was also the small matter of Burberry’s 170th anniversary, but thankfully, that never tipped into heavy-handed nostalgia.

Trenches, obviously, did the heavy lifting. Alongside the Nova check, they’re the brand’s backbone—and Lee went all in. Feminine trenches in ivory, midnight blue, and teal, their gun flaps blown up into ruffles. Check trenches. Leather trenches. A tucked-in cropped shawl-collar trench that felt very cool-girl. Crumpled silk trenches. Patchwork shaggy shearling trenches (the oxblood one… OH MY GOD). A pristine white wool trench that felt almost ceremonial. A dark shearling fur trench dripping in raindrop beading. There was even a cropped quilted black leather trench, and one dark leather trench whose surface was scored with a literal map of the surrounding patch of London—pulled straight from the Burberry archives. That one, Lee said, was his favorite. You could tell. Most of them came slightly oversized, with ’80s-style epaulettes slouching down the shoulder in that don’t try too hard way.

Burberry will always present a polished, globally palatable version of Britishness—that’s the job. But this collection also quietly nodded to the messier side of London nights. The flirty, slightly dirty reality. A guy with a hip flask peeking out of the back pocket of his black wool trousers, wearing a black shearling bomber, purple knit, and night-time sunglasses. A womenswear look—sparkly roll-neck, tights, padded leather jacket slipping off one shoulder—that felt exactly like someone tumbling out of a pub at closing time. An incredible map-embroidered parka and matching trousers that looked like the perfect outfit for barging to the front of a club queue. A sharp gray mohair coat with a peaked collar thrown over a double-zipped leather hoodie, padded with a blue check scarf and—again—sunglasses. Ready for some cross-town mission you don’t explain to anyone.

And then there was that ruffle-collared trench again—this time in shiny black check, over black leather trousers—and suddenly it wasn’t pretty at all. It was powerful. Assertive. Confident.

Which feels like where Burberry is landing right now. Lee finds his point and commits to it. He doesn’t overtalk it. He diverts just enough to show how much range he can pull from the brand’s core codes—and then he moves on. Clean lines. Clear direction. London, at night, fully in focus.