Burberry's official company timeline runs from 1856 to 2026. It records gabardine, the trench coat, four royal warrants and a partnership with the V&A. It does not mention a single perfume.
That is not an oversight. Burberry does not make its own fragrance.
The house was founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry, then 21 years old, in Basingstoke, Hampshire. He invented gabardine in 1879 and patented it in 1888. The fabric reached the poles before it reached fashion. Fridtjof Nansen took it to the Arctic in 1893. Roald Amundsen's team reached the South Pole in 1911 with Burberry gabardine tents and clothing. Robert Falcon Scott wore Burberry on the 1912 expedition he did not return from.
King George V granted the first royal warrant in 1919, as a Tailor. The check arrived in the 1920s as a raincoat lining. It only became an accessory in 1967, when a buyer in the Paris store pulled the lining out of a coat and used it to wrap luggage. Burberry listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2002 and received a royal warrant from King Charles III in 2024. All of that sits on Burberry's own corporate history page.
The fragrance is a licence. On 3 April 2017 Coty announced it had agreed exclusive long-term global licence rights to Burberry Beauty for a cash consideration of £130 million. Coty's own filing records the rights transferring on 2 October 2017. Coty develops, manufactures and distributes the perfume. Burberry collects a royalty.
Her by Burberry followed in 2018, the first pillar launch under the new arrangement. Fragrantica credits Francis Kurkdjian as the perfumer, with blackberry, raspberry and blueberry over jasmine and violet, on a musky amber and woods base.
Here is the part the marketing skips. A licensed fragrance is a commercial arrangement, not a continuation of the trench coat. The people cutting gabardine in Castleford have nothing to do with the people blending the juice. That is how nearly all designer perfume works, and knowing it changes what you think you are buying.
None of which makes Her a weak perfume. It just means the name on the bottle and the hands that made it are two separate things.
Our reading of that berry and jasmine profile is London Her, a 35% extrait spray blended in the UK. The full Burberry-inspired collection sits here, and the wider line-up is in our best perfume dupes UK 2026 guide.
