Clothes have always signified class and quality. In the first world war, Burberry mackintoshes were exclusively officer-class dress, and remained so for the next 40 years, worn by colonels and their ladies at race meetings (not to mention the finalists of the annual Miss Burberry competition). Nobody cared about the check lining. It was the waterproof quality that mattered.

By the mid-1990s, however, everyone, including the upper classes, was succumbing to the attractions of being fashionable rather than classic. Burberry’s “top quality for top people” image was looking tired. The company decided to relaunch its product as “fashion”, using as its power base the famous Burberry check. It was a brilliant move. Kate Moss — Burberry’s “face” — made it hip, and the label became so fashionable that Posh and Becks dressed themselves, their kids and their pets in it, and Japanese fashion followers wore it by the yard.

Before long, football fans began to wear Burberry, too. On the terraces, a logo mania that had kicked off in the early 1990s with designer diffusion lines such as CK Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren Polo, reached its apotheosis in the mass adoption of Burberry’s iconic check.

But football fans are an unreliable lot, and when the hooligan element became identifiable by — horror! — the Burberry check, fashion had suddenly achieved its opposite aim. (Indeed, 10 days ago, a “Burberry ban” at an Aberdeen pub resulted in a respectable woman being refused entry because she was carrying a check umbrella.) Burberry’s response has been pragmatic. Christopher Bailey, the creative director, has divided the brand into Burberry Prorsum (for the style set), Burberry London (for the Queen and her cronies), and the brasher Thomas Burberry (for 18- to 25-year-olds). Last year’s profits speak for themselves. Yobs and nobs, hipsters and fogeys now wear it, but all in different ways. No surprise there — Burberry was, after all, founded upon the principles of class.

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