Burberry Wallet Review

Burberry is a British designer brand that has been selling premium leather goods and clothing since as far back as 1856. Burberry rank in the top 100 for best global brands and primarily sells a range of high fashion clothing including an array of men’s wallets. Burberry’s original ethos was to develop clothing to protect people from the British weather, and are also famed for the development and popularity of Gabardine, a breathable, waterproof, and hardy fabric often used to benefit their original core values. Burberry is also known for its trademarked Burberry checker pattern that can be seen in many of the wallets we’ll be discussing today.

As with any Designer, brand price is always going to be a large factor. With that being said, Burberry Wallets aren’t cheap in price, but compared to other designer brands like Gucci or Louis Vuitton, are actually have some more affordable wallets are aimed at more people on a budget. This article is going to look into Burberry wallets in detail, their range, use of material, sustainability, and whether or not a Burberry wallet is worth the hefty designer price tag. 

Burberry Quality & Craftmanship

As a popular British brand, Burberry used to manufacturer all of its products within the United Kingdom sitting with its core values of being British made, helping with its reputation of luxury and quality. Unfortunately, during the mid-2000s Burberry took it upon themselves to begin the process of clothing many of their UK Based factories. An uncommon business move by larger brands, Burberry wanted the freedom of cheaper labor, and laxer employee laws, to bring costs of production down increasing profits. This obvious choice was China. 

It’s hard to say whether this move has had any impact on the quality of the goods sold. From an ethical standpoint, I believe we shouldn’t be using brands that exploit cheaper labor, and underpay employees, whatever country their in, a wage less than what people can live on. Not only that but the sheer audacity in the firing process of UK-based employees, where they dismissed over 600 of them, is something that really shows the true colors of any business where profit is more important than morals.  I’m going to make a sweeping statement that the quality of goods has dropped over the course of Burberry’s move to overseas manufacturing. This can be equated to less-skilled workers and further cost-cutting practices implemented by the company. 

Burberry Leather & Sustainability

Burberry has jumped upon the sustainability bandwagon and started to change many of its values to fit more in line with helping combat global warming. It’s no secret that clothing brands account for much waste and continue heavy to increased carbon emissions, especially within the leathercraft industry. With leather accessories accounting for more than 10% of Burberry’s total greenhouse gas emissions they are focusing on only using leather tanneries that focus on reducing the adverse impact of climate change within the leathercraft industry.

Not much is known about the exact tanneries that Burberry use for their leather product. What we do know if they mainly reduce in Italy using premium full-grain leather, again with a sustainable edge, in producing all their leather goods – including wallets. Burberry has committed to sourcing 100% of its leather from tanneries with social compliance, environmental accreditation, and traceability. This effort can be seen with Burberry’s current use of sustainable leather with around half currently being sourced this way up from just 1% in 2018. 

But what is Burberry Leather-like in reality? When we got our hands on one of Burberry’s Grainy Leather Card Cases to really test and see the quality of their wallets. We found the leather to be highly attractive in both quality and overall craftsmanship when it comes to manufacturing. The leather had a highly durable feel, with a thicker hide and soft-touch feel to it. The texture, of this wallet especially, was, as they called, grainy, which was both soft and supple with a strong durable feel in the hand. As you’d expect from any designer brand, they still try to uphold a higher standard when it comes to quality and Burberry didn’t disappoint in this regard. 

Types of Burberry Wallets

Burberry offers a large array of different styles of wallets to choose from, with each style, coming in a variety of different patterns or colors. The main types of wallets including traditional style bifolds, slimmer sized cardholders, long wallets, and zipper wallets. Burberry also offers Crossbody Wallets but we don’t necessarily count these as wallets are they’re more similar to handbags than wallets. 

When reviewing any designer brand I always look for two main things to determine whether or not they’re worth the expected high price tag. The first, being the variations in designs and uniqueness of the wallets themselves. Designer brands often have to go very niche in their designs to provide some kind of differentiation compared to more affordable brands. This is usually seen in their use of bold statement pieces, centerpiece logos, and large metal accents. 

Generally speaking, I found Burberry to be a little lax in this department. Many of their wallets we’re simply plain in design and nothing stud out to me that would make me want to purchase one of these wallets over a normally priced wallet. This is not to say Burberry doesn’t have wallets with interesting designs. A lot of their range can be bought in Burberry’s famous trademarked checker pattern that has a distinctive look and will, more often than not, let the world around you know it’s a Burberry Wallet. Other designs incorporate the Burberry logo in some shape or form with large monograms printed on the outside.  

This sentiment is echoed in the actual features of Burberry wallets also. While innovative affordable brands like Bellroy continually strive for innovation in their designs providing wallets with hidden slots, ID Card Slots, and Pull Tabs, all Burberry wallets are stale in their layouts only usually providing simple functionality for storage of cash and credit/debit cards. This is another disappointing aspect of their range and none of their wallets stood out to me in trying to attempt anything other than a generic, mass-produced design that can be found in wallets as cheap as $10.00. 

Final Verdict

Burberry wallets start at a price tag of $170.00 (for their standard card case wallet), and range as high as $1000 (for any crossbody wallet or long wallet). The average price is probably around the $300 – $400 mark which is very standard for any designer brand Burberry included. When compared to other designer brands the price is actually a little cheaper especially when it comes to the cheapest available wallet from any single designer outlet. 

Overall, I wasn’t too impressed with any Burberry wallet. I found that the quality was very good, and I definitely respect their attempts at providing a more sustainable brand going forward. That being said, I didn’t find any one of their wallets to provide anything other than a standard functionality. Store cash here, store cards there. The capacity for this stuff is fine, but I’d expect more from a brand that costs as much as it does. Perhaps brand is everything when it comes to designer, but in my opinion, other designer brands do a far better job of choice in range, innovative designs, and variations. If you’ve got your heart set on a designer wallet then I’d perhaps start with looking and some of these. For more information on Burberry Wallets check out their official website by clicking the link below.