A beach foregrounds Burberry’s latest collection. But it’s not the kind you’d see on MTV’s Spring Break, where the water is sapphire blue and the sand light and dusty, nor where the American Amish go to spend a summer of real-world debauchery, temporarily free from agricultural drudgery. It’s a British beach, one filled with pebbles, camp knick-knacks and 2p machines in a run-down arcade.

Think Brighton, Hunstanton, Whitby, Formby, Clacton, or whatever local coastline remains in your heart as a formative scene of childhood naivety, here is where Tisci wants to set up his deckchair. The setting is one that attracts folk from all walks of life, where community undresses (and probably catches a mean sunburn), and where Tisci lets his dark fantasies run wild. This season’s designs cherish the body, but not in ways one would expect. Bikinis and speedos are nowhere to be seen, replaced by coats in birch-brown nova check and halter-neck gowns swarmed by ruffles.

Bustier shirts and baby doll dresses come in pale gothic lace, lighter (and softer) than candyfloss. Suit jackets are sharp, loosely hung and totally button clad (very Murray Bartlett as the hotel manager in The White Lotus). Slouchy folded denim mingles with jewel-encrusted bra-tops and their coordinating chokers, dazzling side bags in the same shiny silver’s hanging tight on the bicep like armbands made for the one percent. It’s cheeky and slightly impractical – longline mock-metal tour tees and lace midiskirts are hardly the ideal get-up for basking in the summer sun. But that’s exactly Tisci’s point: to reinvent the entrenched mirage of bygone British tradition into something far more twisted and romantic. Forget the swarms of ravenous seagulls and the potent stench of chip fat, this beach is for the blood-hungry crow. And Kanye West’s bedazzled flip-flops.