We are in the midst of London Fashion Week, a few days twice a year where British design talent is front and centre of the fashion world. Tomorrow, Alexander McQueen is back in the capital for the first time since 2001, when ‘Cool Britannia’ reigned supreme, and M&S – the revered heritage British brand – is showing for the first time to coincide with its 100th anniversary.
This idea of how the world’s perception of ‘Britishness’ was the central topic of conversation for a dinner we hosted for a group of global leaders from the consumer sectors, especially against a backdrop of volatility around the world. At MBS, we have spent years tracking Britain’s brands and their equity as a useful barometer of how the country is perceived beyond its borders. With recent shifts in global politics, from evolving US-UK relations and the legacy of Brexit to wider geopolitical uncertainty, the question has become harder to answer, but no less important: how is Brand Britain travelling?
Alexander McQueen is back in the capital for the first time since 2001, when ‘Cool Britannia’ reigned supreme, and M&S – the revered heritage British brand – is showing for the first time to coincide with its 100th anniversary.
During the conversation, one Chief Executive of a heritage British brand said that in the surveys his company runs across Asia, Britishness commands a particular admiration: for order, for heritage, and for cultural cues. “They like American brands,” he said, “but they really admire Britain.”
Aristocracy, monarchy, tea and good manners have been a key export of British identity for the best part of a century, but that picture has also sat alongside a more disruptive one – think of Britpop and the Ministry of Sound, and of David Hockney and the Young British Artists.
And despite a downturn in how Britain has viewed itself in recent years, globally, there is evidence that this does still sell. In the year to March 2026, Burberry completed a transformation that came from returning to explicit British references that the brand had spent years avoiding. Rather than shying away from the likes of the weather and recognisable British places, it changed its tagline to ‘It’s always Burberry weather’ a knowing play on Britain’s rainy reputation. One campaign even drew on the classic British symbol of the country house, which landed hardest in China, where the country house sits at the very top of the list of things consumers associate with Britain.
But heritage on its own isn’t the lesson. As one leader of a global consumer brand put it, heritage is only an asset when it is paired with reinvention: the point is to carry the past forward, not to look back at it. Take Dr Martens, a decades-old workwear boot. It is a brand that has stayed relevant precisely because each new generation reinvents what it means to wear one. The brands that travel best hold the old and the new in tension, with trust and heritage as the central pillar and irreverence, innovation and a little ‘swagger’ on top.
Globally, this doesn’t seem to have faltered, however, there isn’t as much confidence in Britain itself. According to a recent Demos survey, only 47% now say they are proud to be British, down from 74% in 2011, and pride in the monarchy has dropped from 54% to 25%. From a global perspective, just 13% are proud of Britain’s role in the world. Fed a daily diet of “Britain is broken”, the country has become, according to a non-executive director of a consumer industry body, an “echo chamber of negativity”. Yet, as history shows, Britain is at its best when it faces outward with confidence, such as the 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony which has gone down in history for its cinematic retelling of Britishness.
The irony is that the very qualities Britain plays down are the ones others buy. One investor and non-executive director described being told by a Middle East backer that Scotland “wasn’t very sexy”, and that it didn’t stack up against a French or an Italian brand. However, it is exactly that which makes Britishness so appealing. “We’re cosy, we’re outdoorsy, and we’re very high quality, but fundamentally we’re a little bit boring,” she said. “But that’s our selling point, and it’s why we work well in America, because we’re not frightening anybody.”
In part, this is why soft power has long been Brand Britain’s bread and butter, however, with huge changes in the technological and media spaces in recent years, this has taken a hit. This year Britain slipped to fourth in the global soft-power index, overtaken by Japan for the first time, and its standing is weakest of all in America.
“We’re cosy, we’re outdoorsy, and we’re very high quality, but fundamentally we’re a little bit boring, but that’s our selling point, and it’s why we work well in America, because we’re not frightening anybody.”
However, in cultural terms, the output that has been the engine of soft power is still running, but it’s now sitting just out of the spotlight. Take the Marvel films that define American cinema – they are largely made in the UK, by British artists. Plus a plethora of British media is exported around the world, running as far as on every major Chinese platform, the English narration doubling as the way millions of children first learn the language. “That’s not accident,” one media executive explained, “that’s intention.”
So has Brand Britain held its value? On the evidence around the table, yes. Brand Britain remains a valuable proposition abroad and the world still buys into British heritage, trusts British institutions and consumes British creativity. Yet there is a growing disconnect between how Britain is perceived overseas and how it perceives itself. At a moment when the national conversation often focuses on what is broken, the rest of the world appears to see something rather different. And so as we went home on a warm end of summer evening, all of us around the table felt a little more positive and excited about what Brand Britain holds for the future….
