Burberry recreates garments from Shackleton’s polar expedition for National Geographic documentary ’ENDURANCE’

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew wore Burberry gabardine while traversing the vast continent of Antarctica. When their ship, the Endurance, was lost to frigid pack ice, Shackleton kept his crew of 27 men alive for over a year. To support ‘ENDURANCE’, the National Geographic documentary which tells this heroic tale of survival, Burberry has recreated the garments worn by Shackleton’s crew on their landmark expedition.

Burberry outerwear has enabled explorers to discover new horizons for over a century. Protected by gabardine, the revolutionary rain and weather-resistant fabric invented by Thomas Burberry in 1879, pioneers and adventurers have crossed unknown lands, broken new frontiers and pushed the limits of humankind’s knowledge of the globe.

Amongst those explorers was Sir Ernest Shackleton, who, alongside his crew, wore Burberry gabardine in an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent in 1914.

More than a century later, a team of modern-day explorers trace their steps to uncover the sunken ship.

From National Geographic Documentary Films and directed by Oscar®, BAFTA and Emmy® award-winning filmmakers, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, as well as BAFTA-nominated director Natalie Hewit, ‘ENDURANCE’ tells the inspiring stories of two landmark expeditions, bound by their shared grit and determination.

To bring Shackleton’s voyage to life, the team recreated the conditions in which the crew journeyed across the Antarctic by commissioning ten replicas of the garments created by Burberry for Shackleton and his crew. Made with gabardine, the Burberry ensemble comprised an anorak, trousers and hood. As a lightweight garment, it enabled movement, and would have been worn in windy and snowy conditions with layers of knitwear beneath. Green in colour, the ensemble was reportedly soothing for the eyes in snowy landscapes.

The director, Jimmy Chin, commented, ‘It’s the greatest survival tale ever told, but the world may have forgotten the details. I thought I knew the story, yet when we dove into it and had so much incredible access from the Scott Polar Research Institute and Royal Geographical Society, all the new details helped us re-experience the journey that Shackleton and his team went through. It was very humbling and eye-opening.’

The producer, Ruth Johnston, added, ‘I called Burberry soon after production began as they’re integral to this story. Shackleton’s men were wearing Thomas Burberry’s material, gabardine, and they wouldn’t have survived without it. Burberry agreed to make outfits from the original pattern and material for our recreations. In below-freezing temperatures in Iceland, the mountain guides who played the expedition crew were amazed at how well Burberry worked. It also was useful for us to have the original material at hand when it came to colour-treating the Burberry outfits, which are frequent in Hurley’s footage!’

‘Burberry gabardine, the breathable and weatherproof fabric invented by our founder, is woven into the history of polar exploration and was worn by Shackleton for his Antarctic expeditions, including the Endurance. We are delighted to have provided replica Burberry gabardine outfits for this defining documentary which will bring this remarkable story to new audiences and future generations.’

Carly Eck

Brand Curator of Burberry’s Archive

In addition to the Endurance expedition, Sir Ernest Shackleton wore Burberry gabardine for two other Antarctic expeditions. This included the Nimrod Expedition in 1907-1909 when he ingeniously used a sheet of Burberry gabardine to protect the engine of his motor car from freezing over.  

Shackleton’s own testimony recounts the durability of Burberry outerwear which continues to define our collections today: ‘I attribute the saving of one man’s life... to the fact that he was entirely covered up by Burberry wind-clothing. I have therefore every confidence in recommending Messrs. Burberrys’ goods to explorers and to the general public.’

To celebrate the release of ‘ENDURANCE’, Burberry will host two of the ten replicas created for the documentary at its Regent Street flagship for public view from the 12 October – 30 November

To discover more about ‘ENDURANCE’, please click here. 

To discover more about gabardine and Burberry’s heritage of enabling explorers, please click here. 

 About Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition 

• In 1914, Anglo-Irish veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton commanded an expedition to sail to Antarctica. His mission was to be the first to traverse the vast continent from one coast to another: a distance of 1,800 miles across the most difficult terrain on the planet.  
• Endurance, however, would never reach her destination, getting trapped in the pack ice and ultimately sinking, leaving Shackleton and his men alone on the ice of the Weddell Sea, eating penguins, seals, their sled dogs and as time went on, a starvation diet of limpets and even boiled seaweed when the crew eventually reached Elephant Island.
• Shackleton soon realised his men would not survive much longer and decided to sail a lifeboat with five other crew to the island of South Georgia, a perilous voyage of over 800 miles across the stormy Southern Ocean, to seek help. 
• Shackleton returned to Elephant Island 308 days after abandoning the Endurance and saved all the marooned men. Unbelievably and against all the odds, Shackleton and all 27 of his crew survived.  

About Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (DIRECTORS and PRODUCERS) 

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are Academy Award®-winning filmmakers and the directors and producers of ‘Free Solo’, the intimate and unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold that won seven Emmys®, a BAFTA and the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. Their first film together, ‘Meru’, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar® shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. More recently, they directed and produced ‘Wild Life’, a sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve wild land in Chile and Argentina. Other projects include National Geographic’s DGA-nominated and Emmy®-winning documentary ‘The Rescue’, chronicling the against-all-odds rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand; ‘Return to Space’, about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list; and two series for National Geographic: ‘Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin’ and ‘Photographer’. Their first scripted feature, ‘Nyad’, about Diana Nyad’s 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, began streaming on Netflix in the fall of 2023 and garnered Academy Award®, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations for both stars Jodie Foster and Annette Bening.  

About Natalie Hewit (DIRECTOR and PRODUCER) 

Natalie Hewit is an award-winning director and producer who has been making primetime documentaries and series for major terrestrial and international broadcasters for over a decade. Her work has received widespread industry recognition and critical acclaim, including nominations for a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society Award for Channel 4’s ‘Surviving Covid’, a feature documentary filmed over two months inside an ICU ward during the first wave of the COVID 19 pandemic in London. She also received Grierson and Broadcast Award nominations for the BBC’s drama-doc ‘The Drug Trial: Emergency at the Hospital’. With human narratives at their core, her projects have taken her to numerous remote and highly challenging locations. In 2016, she spent three months filming ‘Antarctica: Ice Station Rescue’ at the Halley VI Research Station for the BBC’s prestigious ‘Horizon’ science series, which was nominated for Best Documentary at the Broadcast Awards. Her work has also led her to collaborate with various high-profile talent, including Greta Thunberg and Louis Theroux. ‘ENDURANCE’ marks her second National Geographic feature and second visit to Antarctica, where she documented the expedition to find the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s infamous ship in the toughest conditions on the planet. Hewit is known for her passion for narratives that explore what it means to be human, resulting in her work being deemed ‘Five Stars ‒ Essential’ by the Financial Times and ‘haunting and powerful’ by The Guardian. 

About Ruth Johnston (PRODUCER) 

Ruth Johnston is an award-winning producer and executive producer of films ranging from Oscar® winner ‘Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)’ and Oscar® nominees “Hunger Ward” and “Lead Me Home” to festival favorites “Reason I Jump” and ‘Master of Light’.She’s a veteran producer behind hundreds of hours of film, television and interactive digital media projects, including the multiple Emmy® -winning ‘Cash Cab’. As an executive, she was COO of Lion TV in New York and, most recently, general manager of Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions, where she grew and managed a team that became an industry leader in impact storytelling. Today, she’s one of two co-founders of Consequential, a production and consultancy company operating at the intersection of storytelling and social change. Johnston is currently producing ‘ENDURANCE’ for National Geographic Documentary Films and overseeing production for Consequential’s other documentary films while developing several projects across the spectrum of the world’s most pressing issues. Consultancy clients include philanthropists, storytellers and platforms optimising strategies for development, production, distribution, and audience acquisition and activation. An avid traveler, certified rescue diver and sailor who is originally from Northern Ireland, Johnston lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest. 

• The ITAE crew poses on the ice after evacuating the Endurance. (credit: RGS/Frank Hurley)
• Frank Hurley with his cameras, one of which was a moving image camera: a Prestwich No. 5 cinema camera. (credit: SPRI/Frank Hurley)
• The Endurance, frozen and keeled over from the pressure of the ice. (Credit: BFI/Frank Hurley)
• Cast members on the recreation set in Iceland.  (Weddell Sea Pictures/Jimmy Chin)
• Recreation cast members on set in Iceland.  (credit: Weddell Sea Pictures/Jimmy Chin)
• The S.A. Agulhas II surrounded by sea ice as it makes its way towards the coordinates to find the Endurance.  (credit: James Blake)
• The S.A. Agulhas II surrounded by sea ice as it makes its way towards the coordinates to find the Endurance. (Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/James Blake)
• Mensun Bound and John Shears on the ice in the Antarctic.  (credit: National Geographic/Esther Horvath)
• All store capture - Courtesy of Burberry