Bridget Foley’s Diary Tory Burch: A Woman on the Move

Tory Burch didn’t grow up yearning to be a designer; in college she studied art history rather than fashion. She did grow up conscious of the importance of style, seeing it as representative of, and even integral to, one’s personality. That notion came from her parents, the elegant Buddy and Reva Robinson. The world in which the Robinsons raised their children pulsed with the elegance of the familiar — pretty, preppy, proper. Burch built her business on an aesthetic that distilled and marketed that orientation. She wanted to address a broad audience, offering obvious good taste of the silky Hermès ilk (her father loved the stuff) but without the stratospheric price tag. A standard concept now, it was quietly subversive among the designer set when Burch established her brand in 2004. Turns out accessible luxury is but one area in which she was prescient. Other designers who went into business at about the same time were typically younger than Burch, with formal design school training. Often they wanted to launch namesake brands immediately upon graduation. While their aesthetics were often more outré (relatively speaking) and their target markets more luxe-leaning, ironically such designers tended to be more inside-the-box when developing their business

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