EVENT UPDATE : CLARIDGE'S BURBERRY CHRISTMAS TREE 2025 UNVEILING .. CLARIDGES LONDON.. NOVEMBER 25TH 2025 ..

 

Credit: Dave Benett/Getty for Burberry

The Christmas season has officially begun with the unveiling of Claridges Christmas Tree, this year sponsored by Burberry and designed by Daniel Lee.. Joan was in sparkling form as one of the star guests along with Richard E. Grant, Celia Imrie, Jennifer Saunders, Sophie Dahl, Nicky Haslam, David Downton among others.. 

 (Photo by Ricky Vigil M / Justin E Palmer/GC Images)

Claridge’s celebrates ‘tradition and togetherness’ with its Burberry-designed Christmas tree

The 2025 installation in the hotel’s chequerboard lobby features giant chess pieces and bows crafted from surplus Burberry fabric

Fiona McCarthy

Claridge's Christmas Tree this year is a 16-foot wonder, designed by Daniel Lee, Burberry’s chief creative officer, complete with hundreds of bows made from the fashion house’s surplus fabric. Dotted across the hotel’s iconic chequerboard lobby floor are giant matte gold chess pieces, a play on the 169-year-old house’s Equestrian Knight insignia (apparently founder Thomas
Burberry was a mad chess fan); knights, queens, bishops, kings, rooks and pawns will also adorn the tree alongside golden hanging bells. While it is Lee’s first fir, it is Burberry’s second, after former creative director Christopher Bailey delivered a gleaming tower of a hundred silver and gold fabric umbrellas in 2015.

This year’s tree, says Lee, was his chance “to celebrate tradition and togetherness, expressed through vibrant colours and rich textures,” he says. “I wanted to celebrate the beauty of British landscapes at this time of year so we combined the wild, natural foliage from the UK with thistles, Scotland’s national flower (a nod to Burberry’s connection to the Highlands where its iconic cashmere check is made, primarily with Johnstons of Elgin), brass bells and at its base cosy check cushions and blankets,” the designer enthuses.

The Burberry vibe has been extended through the hotel for Christmas in other ways too – the fashion house’s famous check, in a deep festive red, lines the hotel’s 129-year-old Art Deco scissor-gated lift (the oldest working lift in London), wraps the guest key card envelopes; while Burberry scarves will keep the doormen’s necks warm through the winter.

Since Claridge’s unveiled its first ever designer Christmas tree in 2009 – an otherworldly frozen tropical forest dreamscape whimsically conjured by Dior’s then creative director John Galliano – going to see the Christmas tree at London’s most famous hotel has become a grown-up version of childhood visits to Santa.

The designer tree idea was first sparked over a glass of champagne in the hotel’s moody Fumoir bar, when Paula Fitzherbert, Maybourne’s Head of Global Communications (the hotel group also has The Connaught, The Berkeley and the Emory in London) and Kate Hudson, who worked at Dior (now Claridge’s archivist) wondered if Galliano might get involved with making the hotel fit for Christmas. With an immediate, resounding yes, Galliano and creative director Michael Howells (who had collaborated with the designer on his catwalk shows) dreamed up a scene of flowing, iridescent leopards and slithering snakes, “all hand-made in papier-mâché by artisans in Paris and then shipped over,” Fitzherbert recalls.

Before then, there had been a classic Norwegian spruce adorned with classic baubles and shopping bags from the nearby Bond Street boutiques scattered around its base. When Galliano’s design debuted, “it was a bit controversial,” laughs Fitzherbert. “There were some naysayers for sure,” she says, remembering “almost crying” as she delivered the faxed sketch sent through by Galliano to Philippe Leboeuf, then Claridge’s general manager. “But he was just so fabulous and said, ‘sounds fantastic, let’s go for it’.”

Transforming the lobby requires working through the night – “between the last guests going to bed and the first ones coming down for breakfast,” says Fitzherbert – and often means bringing in cherry pickers (the trees can go as high as 21ft, reaching up to the first floor landing), staging West End-style lighting, taking down chandeliers and, for Diane von Furstenberg, even removing the lobby portrait of Mrs Claridge, while set builders grab a quick snooze on the sweeping staircase and staff wheel in room-service trolleys laden with coffee, burgers (and champagne when the job’s done) to keep the team going.

Most take two nights to install; Christian Louboutin’s “The Loubi Express” train – complete with a number of accompanying trees decorated with gingerbread shoe biscuits and twinkling fairy lights – took four. As wild and whacky as some of these may have been, there have been just a few quiet moments when the Claridge’s team have said no. Dior’s request to lay grey carpet like the one in its Avenue Montaigne boutique up the hotel’s lobby stairs was “a step too far,” says Fitzherbert; and once Dolce & Gabbana wanted to put a jacket on a throne which didn’t suit the Art Deco vibe.

It’s all unveiled during a riotous party, which this year Burberry are hosting in over the Foyer restaurant. The best of London’s party people sipped on bespoke Burberry “Winter Knight” cocktails (infused with Claridge’s gin, herby Yellow Chartreuse liqueur, mulled spices and hints of citrus, topped with a splash of Billecart-Salmon Le Réserve) while grazing on crab tartlets topped with caviar, crumpets topped with black truffle shavings and CFT (Claridge’s Fried Turkey) from the laden feasting table.

The Claridge’s Christmas tree is now integral to the hotel’s annual traditions, as sought after as a table for one of its lavish afternoon teas (which book out the minute reservations open). “It’s an idea of what Christmas ought to be. An exercise in contemporary nostalgia,” offers David Downton, the hotel’s resident artist. Lee agrees. “Claridge’s always feels like home to me, from the moment I walk through its revolving doors,” he says. “It’s where I’ve enjoyed many special moments over the years.” So where else better for the designer responsible for recently putting the most British of fashion brands back on the map, in a place he says is a long-standing “true symbol of elegance and British heritage”, celebrating Christmas in rich, plush glory, “my favourite time of year.”

This year’s Claridge’s Christmas tree will be on show until January 4, 2026; claridges.co.uk