Burberry’s Pre-Fall collection retold the tale of Beauty and the Beast, with delicate white lace dresses wrapped in the shaggiest shearlings this side of the Scottish Highlands. Word was the direction for the collection was shorter, more feminine, more structured, but it was those coats that took center stage—and not just the sauvage shearlings. There was also a woolly, bully dégradé calfskin with huge horn buttons and, on a somewhat sleeker tip, a trench in suede with a tribal-beaded, embellished yoke and collar. Even when the sheepskin was tamed—sheared, leopard-printed, and bonded to camel cashmere, or shaved into a patchwork of four different lengths—it still made its point loud and clear: Burberry’s Pre-Fall is the season of the statement coat. Christopher Bailey guaranteed the accompaniments didn’t get in the way. The femininity of those pretty white lace dresses was matched by silk georgette pieces in a tiny clover print. Celia Johnson, the U.K.’s celluloid sweetheart of the 1940s, could almost have worn one for her Brief Encounter. But upper lips have clearly unstiffened when such items are now shown wrapped in the shag of a shearling-lined biker jacket, with suede thigh-highs or kinky peep-toed ankle booties.