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The quiet revolutionary Designer, businesswoman and philanthropist Tory Burch discusses the mentor who taught her to embrace ambition and how she’s paying it forward WORDS ALISON TAY
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ory Burch admires any woman who marches to the beat of her own drum. It takes one to know one. With a £2.5billion fashion brand under her homespun raffia belt and a place on the Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, Tory credits her success to offering something that was missing in the market. Spotting an opportunity to create affordable, design-led wardrobe staples, Tory opened a boutique on New York’s Elizabeth Street in 2004 that was unlike anything else in the city. ‘At the time, stores were very minimalist and stark, and we went the opposite way,’ Tory says of her first store’s homely feel, which has now become an intrinsic part of her brand aesthetic worldwide. Her instinct to go against the grain paid off and, to date, the executive chairman and chief creative officer of her eponymous label has more than 250 boutiques across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Australia to her name. All the while, she has kept the idea of home at the heart of her brand – unsurprising since Tory was on a career break to raise her children when the business was born. With Harper’s Bazaar, Vera Wang, Polo Ralph Lauren and Loewe on her fashion CV, she was uniquely placed to start her brand in 2004, which she did with an ecommerce platform first – astonishingly ahead of its time. ‘During my years working in the fashion industry, I noticed a void in the market for beautiful clothing with a designer aesthetic at a more accessible price point – classic pieces with a modern point of view,’ she explains.
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