{"id":957519,"date":"2026-05-13T17:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/957519\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:42:17","slug":"fashion-says-final-farewell-to-joan-burstein-at-london-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/957519\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashion Says Final Farewell to Joan Burstein at London Memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLONDON<\/a> \u2014<\/strong> The prayer hall at the Liberal Jewish Cemetery in Willesden was packed on Wednesday afternoon with familiar fashion figures saying a final farewell to Joan Burstein, the retail trailblazer and founder of Browns<\/a> in London.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuests at the memorial service \u2014 including Stephen Jones, Caroline Rush, Erdem Moral\u0131o\u011flu, Nicole Farhi, Sam McKnight and Jonathan Newhouse \u2014 crammed onto benches in the chapel, while others, including Daphne Guinness and Yasmin Sewell, stood in the aisles.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey remembered a woman who championed designers including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan when they were still students, and who, well into her 90s, still set a standard for style and strength.<\/p>\n

\n\tRabbi Alexandra Wright of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue said Burstein was cremated in Ibiza, where she spent most of the year, and where she celebrated her 100th birthday in February.<\/a> Her family brought her remains back to London<\/a> \u201cso that she can be buried here in our cemetery, beneath a rose bush, and so that her family and you, her dear friends, can say farewell,\u201d the rabbi said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWright described Burstein as \u201ca pioneer, a founder, a woman with a discerning eye,\u201d but also \u201ca daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, a woman whom everyone adored.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe noted that Burstein\u2019s life began in a family of \u201cfine seamstresses\u201d and with a father whose sisters had been court dressmakers and who dressed her from a young age in beautifully cut clothes.<\/p>\n

\n\tBurstein\u2019s instinctive appreciation of design and materials, the rabbi said, evolved into \u201ca discerning eye, [a woman] willing to take risks and invest in the early careers of designers whose trajectories would surge forward and soar in the world of high fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTogether with her husband, Sidney, they started their retail business with a single market stall in\u00a0London, and cofounded\u00a0Browns<\/a>\u00a0in 1970 with a store on South Molton Street. It quickly became the go-to place for women who loved fashion and who were willing to experiment with new names from New York, Milan and Paris, including Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren and Missoni, which Burstein introduced to the U.K. market.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer earlier venture, Feathers, which was later run by her nephew Peter Burstein and his wife Suzanne, also became a key London fashion address before it closed in 2018.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe order of service at Joan Burstein\u2019s memorial.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTianwei Zhang\/WWD<\/p>\n

\n\tHer son Simon Burstein<\/a> described his mother during the service as \u201cthe personification of grace and style\u201d and \u201ca queen in her own domain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKnown for her warmth and charm, she also had a formidable side. \u201cBelieve me, you did not want to cross my mother when she would give you a look that would kill you on the spot. Her standards were high, and you had to meet them. And if you didn\u2019t, she would tell you in no uncertain terms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimon recalled the trauma of his parents losing their business and home in the late 1960s, pulling him and his sister Caroline Hammond out of the French lyc\u00e9e and putting them to work. \u201cThrough hardship, tenacity, determination and flair, that period ultimately enabled my mother to excel and become a beacon in fashion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tBurstein\u2019s daughter Caroline, who is married to photographer Keith Hammond, described her mother as a woman who was always pushing forward, but who still made time for small, everyday joys.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur mother never looked back. She never regretted. She was, in every season of her life, relentlessly positive. It has been a little over 10 years since she retired from Browns<\/a> and the world of fashion. She left without a backward glance, simply looking toward everything she hadn\u2019t yet done. That was her. Always forward,\u201d Hammond said.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe recalled how, as her mother\u2019s strength declined, Burstein accepted it \u201cwith grace and made the very most of what she had,\u201d studying flowers \u2014 often delivered by her granddaughter from her flower farm \u2014 savoring every sip of morning coffee, and every bite of banana on toast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery afternoon, she played Scrabble fiercely and, more often than not, beat all her adversaries who were less than half her age. She sparred and joked with her carers, every single one of whom fell completely in love with her. That was her presence: huge, warm, impossible to resist,\u201d Hammond said.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added: \u201cAt 95, she decided she wanted to buy a house in Ibiza. Of course she did. She never lost her love of clothes and jewelry, and we were shopping for her until the very last week of her life. She maintained her standards throughout, including, I should say, drinking Laurent Perrier pink Champagne every single evening, right up until her final two days with us, her excuse being that it was the only alcohol that didn\u2019t upset her stomach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroline Rush, former chief executive officer of the British Fashion Council, recalled saving up in her early 20s, for her first Browns purchase: a pair of cowboy boots.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was a fountain of wisdom, incredible stories, incredible generosity and grace, who just loved creativity and talent so much,\u201d Rush added during the service, which ended with Gloria Gaynor\u2019s song \u201cI Will Survive\u201d playing on a portable speaker. Guests later joined the family at a reception at the Old Kitchen, part of Kenwood House in Hampstead.<\/p>\n

\n\tBurstein was made a CBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, in 2006 for services to the British fashion industry. She later became honorary chair of Browns after selling the business to Farfetch, which is now owned by Coupang. <\/p>\n

\n\tShe is survived by Simon, founder of Leathersmith, which sells men\u2019s clothing, accessories and luxury paper products, and Caroline, an artist. She is also survived by seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 The prayer hall at the Liberal Jewish Cemetery in Willesden was packed on Wednesday afternoon with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":957520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,27722,393,4884,257,115546,16,15],"class_list":["post-957519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-browns","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-london","tag-simon-burstein","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116568506404573630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}