A big something for a rainy day

Kate Moss stares down from the store's Knightsbridge hoarding and everyone from Madonna to Liam Gallagher has been pictured in that red, black and beige check. There is no denying that Burberry is cool.

Not bad for a brand that, not so long ago, was "a raincoat manufacturer serving the Asian clients".

If you see the queues at Burberry's Bond Street store to snap up handbags at £279, swimwear at £45 and floppy hats for £65, you might well agree that Rose Marie Bravo is well worth her reported £10 million.

She joined Burberry in 1997 from American fashion store Saks. Mrs Bravo reined in the disparate network licensees and developed the successful accessory lines that have no doubt contributed to the store's massive upturn in profits. She took what was best from the label's long history and made it hip.

Recruiting Roberto Menichetti as design director, she added a high fashion line, Prorsum, to showcase the label's most fashionable looks as well as Burberry London - a more classic approach - and the more casual Thomas Burberry. Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the Burberry check. In clubbers' paradise Ibiza you couldn't move for check bikinis and floppy hats.

However, Mrs Bravo is clever enough to be looking beyond the trademark. Replacing Menichetti with British designer Christopher Bailey last year, the latest Prorsum show in March, was almost entirely check free.