It was beige before beauty as a disparate gaggle of celebrities and fashion notables gathered last night to christen the cream-colored fantasia that is the newly reopened Burberry flagship on East 57th Street.
Within the shop’s colorless walls, the likes of Cher, Anna Wintour, Tyra Banks and Carmelo Anthony chatted and posed for pictures as champagne and sweet pea tarts, a nod to the label’s British origins, flowed generously.
The luxury fashion brand, famed for its trench coats and plaid-like check, gave its Manhattan shop a makeover, under the direction of its chief creative officer, Daniel Lee.
Mr. Lee, a rust-haired Brit from the north of England, arrived at Burberry in 2022 from Bottega Veneta on a wave of great expectations that have yet to be fully met.
A chief executive shuffle and falling sales amid an overall industry downturn gave the evening some sense of precarity. However, this was not evident in the demeanor of Mr. Lee, who bounced around near the entrance while he was presented to well-wishers by a harried cohort of handlers.
“We are trying to transport Britishness around the world, give it a modern spin,” Mr. Lee said, explaining the inspiration for the store’s makeover. In the window, an undulating green installation by the British textile artist Tom Atton Moore was shedding moss-colored bits like a mudroom welcome mat.
Looking fresh faced, Mr. Lee admitted one of his first stops when in New York City is Rescue Spa on 19th Street. “I always do a facial,” he said. “You can’t beat it.”
The “Booksmart” actress Kaitlyn Dever, wearing a drapey mint cardigan and billowing trousers, circled a display of Burberry trench coats in the center of the room. (She recounted her mother’s advice to always pack a trench coat when visiting New York.)
Unsurprisingly, many guests were outfitted in some version of the trench style. Nicky Hilton Rothschild was in a check-print mini iteration; the actress Jodie Turner-Smith donned a suede coat with floral cutouts and matching pants. One exception was the model Cara Delevingne, in a short coat of brown wool. After swanning in for a quick hello to Mr. Lee, she headed straight for the photo wall, posing against the sand-colored backdrop.
As an army of staff members in bright knight blue sweaters — a signature color Mr. Lee introduced in his first collection — darted around like Pac-Man ghosts, the playwright Jeremy O. Harris towered over the crowd reminiscing about his idyllic summer stint in the Cotswolds, the region in the west of England known for its lush vistas and storybook cottages.
“I was really British this year,” said Mr. Harris, who wrote “Slave Play,” which just wrapped up a run on the West End in London. “I am transitioning to being a Brit.”
As guests ambled among the fall merchandise, picking at deviled eggs topped with caviar, a flurry of movement announced the arrival of Ms. Banks. Fresh from closing the Victoria’s Secret runway on Tuesday, she arrived in a dizzying check-print coat. After pausing for fans at the entrance, she headed to the photo corner, smizing as if on cue.
It was an evening of firsts for Richie Shazam, the photographer and model, who had actually never worn a trench coat before: “This one’s very moody, it’s almost curing my seasonal depression.”
Reports of Cher’s imminent arrival were circulating.
“Where isn’t she these days? I’m so excited, we are waiting for Cher. I believe!” Shazam said.
Cher soon made an entrance to a blinding swirl of clicks and flashes, her frosted blond hair spilling over a black coat. She arrived on the arm of her boyfriend, Alexander Edwards, a music executive, and greeted Mr. Lee, posing for photos before making her way upstairs.
Like Ms. Banks, the singer was also a part of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show this week, as its musical act.
“It was fun, but I was nervous,” Cher, a friend of the house, said reaching for Mr. Edwards’s hand. “I still get nervous!”
“I have a sweet spot for England,” she added, now tucked away in a corner near a display of sneakers on an upper level.
“We weren’t famous until we went there,” she explained of her early career with her former musical partner and husband, Sonny Bono, who died in 1998. The two performers visited England in the summer of 1965 to promote their single “I Got You Babe.”
While in New York, Cher is preparing for the launch of her book “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” out next month.
She was mum on any spoilers but given the star’s well-documented ups and downs, it is likely it will have more color than the stark walls she found herself in on Wednesday night.
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