Missing a year of Glastonbury Festival would feel like missing a birthday for Cara Delevingne. The British model and actor prioritises a weekend on Worthy Farm so much so that she gets it written into job contracts that she’s not available for the June dates. Non-negotiable. "It’s the festival I’ve been to the most and it’s the one I will go to forever," she tells ELLE UK from her Los Angeles home.

"Missing a year makes me feel like I'm missing my own birthday. If I'm doing a movie or something, I'll always put it into a contract."

It makes sense that this festival fan is fronting Burberry’s latest campaign, which champions Britain’s long-standing love affair of days spent outdoors listening to music, from Glastonbury to Green Man.

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"I grew up going to festivals and I grew up doing Burberry. I feel really grateful and very honoured to be in the campaign," she admits. "Burberry are just the loveliest people to work for and work with. It’s always been that way. So, to come back to it, it's like coming home."

Delevingne isn’t alone as the Burberry line-up includes Liam Gallagher, Loyle Carner, Alexa Chung, and Lennon Gallagher, Molly Moorish-Gallagher and Gene Gallagher amongst it. "It was honestly very surreal. It was like we're at a festival, but where you can play your own music," Delevingne says of the impressive backdrop that echoes classic imagery of candid festival moments. "It was kind of ideal. Sometimes when you’re on shoots and they're like “smile”, and you have to force it, but this was actually me just having a f*cking blast."

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Delevingne appears in three looks in the campaign, made up of a consortium of festival-ready pieces that would easily fit into her own wardrobe. There was one piece that did travel home that day. "Don’t worry I was honest and said that I’m taking it. I do not wear skirts a lot, but it's a Burberry kilt," she shares. "I remember showing up to my sister's birthday in this kilt a couple of days later, and everyone looked at me because they hadn’t seen me in a skirt since I was forced to wear one. I would never choose to wear a skirt, but a kilt is different. I am definitely taking with me for festivals."

Festival memories run deep for Cara, but there’s something about her first time attending in the summer she was 15 that stands out most. "I think the first time going to a festival is just always the most insane thing."

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"The first time I went to Glastonbury someone's ticket was fake and we had to break them in. Six of us were sleeping in a three-man pop-up tent, and it was absolute chaos. It felt like a real pilgrimage to find where we were going and to find our friends. And then finally you get there. I miss that part of festivals, obviously, maybe not the camping, but yes, squeezing everything in a pop-up tent. But I miss how hard it is to get it sorted and to get it done. When things are so hard, it does make the payoff so much better."

Now in her early thirties things have changed. "My back can't handle it," she laughs. "Also, being sober is so different at a festival. They tell you when you get sober that you won’t feel like sh*t the next day, but you do because you stay up late. Anyways, I'm just old now and if go to sleep too late you just feel like ass."

While the idea of a festival usually conjures images of massive sound systems set amongst otherwise peaceful green fields, there is so much more variety than this in the UK, whether it’s Notting Hill Carnival or Pride.

"I try to live proudly all year round," Delevingne says. "Queer people are just the most not eccentric as such, but also just the most creative. There’s no trying to be normal, which I feel like when you live suppressing something for so long, when you finally live freely and live who you are, you want to just be the most yourself you've ever been and I think that comes out in a way that queer people celebrate each other and celebrate being queer, because it really is all or nothing."

As Pride month takes hold, Delevingne admits that this could be one of the most crucial in our lifetime so far. "It seems throughout history that you take two steps forward and take three steps back. And I think that in these moments when we're being pushed back, we really just have to keep pushing forward and keep being represented and representing ourselves. That to me is the most important thing."

Cara Delevingne’s Festival Essentials

"Okay, so I have a few essentials that I always bring now I'm a bit older, one is a camel pouch. It’s small, it's sleek, you can put it under your jacket, just so you can have water wherever you go, shove electrolytes in there, whatever works.

I also always bring a head torch. I think there's something about getting lost in the dark when I was at Glastonbury in the first year, there's slightly traumatised me for life, because I bring a head torch wherever I go. Even if I go on holiday, I always bring one.

I never think it's a problem wearing the same thing twice at Glastonbury, just as long as you cover all bases, of, like, an umbrella that can be used in the rain or the sun. It doesn’t usually rain, but you need to be prepared.

I don't like wellies unless it's raining. I do a lot of walking, and I like to move very far around the festival in a day. So, I prefer hiking shoes."

This article was first seen on ELLE UK.