Burberry chief Angela Ahrendts wants to 'sell the British attitude across the world'

Angela Ahrendts is dressed in a £2,195 Burberry Prorsum cropped leather biker jacket, a green mini-skirt and four-inch heels. Imagine a slightly older Jennifer Aniston playing a corporate executive and you'd get the vibe that the US-born retailer is exuding tonight.

Around the Burberry chief executive, hundreds of Beijing's glitterati are coming to terms with a recently finished fashion show that saw holographic models transmogrify into clouds of snow mid-catwalk. Britpop music blasts from the PA. The four walls of Beijing Television Centre's sound stage are clad with a vast moving digital image of the Thames, complete with the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye.

Ahrendts leans forward and raises her voice over the Suede track and the clinking Champagne glasses.

"This is the what I think we've done with Burberry," she shouts in her thick Indiana accent.

"We have stopped just 'making stuff'. We've stopped making stuff and we've created a pure brand. That is the essence."