The Re-Burch of Tory Burch
“Women, is Tory Burch cool, or no?”
Someone recently posed that question word-for-word on the app formerly known as Twitter and was met with resounding affirmations to the positive.
The query, prompted by someone weighing whether or not to buy some shoes, incidentally mirrors a question currently preoccupying fashion editors: is Tory Burch actually cool now?
Tory Burch! The mistress of the mall, the maven of the mass-market! Suddenly, as her eponymous brand celebrates its 20th anniversary, it's been rebirthed as the hot new thing.
Tory Burch Spring/Summer 2024 didn’t prompt the question — it put a period on the answer.
It was a startlingly modern collection, doubly so because it bore the Tory Burch name. Wearing techy eyewear befitting fashionable welders, models clutched molded resin handbags, their hair slicked back, and feet clad in sculpted mary janes.
They wore crisp collarless jackets, vareuse-style pullover sweaters, and tech-y zip shirts tucked insouciantly into menswear-inflected slacks. They were walking through the American Museum of Natural History but they looked like the future.
Burch’s SS24 collection, styled by a The Row veteran, only looks that much more austerely stylish juxtaposed against the pussy bow dresses and floral gowns that Burch showed only a few years ago. It's night and day, a contemporary luxury label versus preppy Connecticut-core.
We're at the point where armchair critics can confidently (and justifiably) compare Tory Burch to Hussein Chalayan. Burch isn’t putting transforming table dresses on the runway — yet — her latest collections are channeling a similar, heretofore unseen modernist design ethos.
Remember, we’re talking about a brand arguably most famous for medallion-laden slippers.
The cool kids have noticed. Front-row guests at Tory Burch SS24 included Suki Waterhouse, Tiffany Haddish, Hari Nef, and Uma Thurman (!). Longtime muse Emily Ratajkowski walked the runway.
In February 2023, following Burch's SS23 presentation, The New York Times ran a semi-incredulous headline about Burch's sudden coolness. Fashion pundits, including Laura Reily, Susie Bubble, and Rachel Tashjian, had already picked up on the re-Burch.
And, if TikTokers with millions of followers aren’t attending Burch runways, they’re being tapped to take over Burch’s remarkably canny social media pages. This is a particularly salient example of how a trendy, young following that grew up being aware of Burch through cultural osmosis has matured in time to partake in the new era of Tory.
EmRata and musician Phoebe Bridgers have worn custom Burch to big events; TikTok tastemakers like street-styler @thepeoplegallery and Tyrell Hampton, photographer to the social media stars, have been recruited to create Tory content; invitees include Highsnobiety alum like Chase Sui Wonders, Anaa Saber, Orion Carloto, and Lukita Maxwell.
And on a commercial level, hardly any brand was better situated to capitalize on balletcore than Tory Burch, whose trademark flats are finding new life as aughts-era fashion cycles back into focus.
"There’s an incredible Toryssiance right now," said Liana Satenstein, a Highsnobiety contributor who’s previously worked with Burch. "Great wearable pieces that pack a punch. That’s not always easy to do. No overthinking looks necessary; no cumbersome annoying unwearable pieces. Fab shoulder bags, funky shoes with fat toe rings for the downtown girls."
Tory Burch for the downtown girls? More likely than you think: there’s already at least some subversive appeal in pairing Tory Burch flats with ripped low-rise jeans or slouchy schoolgirl socks, for instance — two very now things you’ll see any given night around Dimes Square — but there’s also genuine intrigue in Burch’s mainline designs.
Move aside #NewBottega, it’s time for #NewBurch — even if Burch herself may demur.
“The rebrand wasn’t announced nor was it ever said to be one at all,” fashion writer Cortne Bonilla said. “Instead, [Burch] stepped down as CEO and began to focus on design and design alone, and that’s showcased by the latest offerings.”
#NewBurch first emerged in 2021. That was the year that Burch presented an impressively urbane Fall/Winter 2021 collection and the Good Luck sneaker, which debuted with a well-styled campaign similarly indicative of Burch's newfound— dare I say — quiet luxury inclinations.
The same year, Buch opened a flagship store in New York’s Soho neighborhood. The latter, with a handsomely understated facade, is a tangible manifestation of the recent modernist bent that’s played out in subsequent collections.
If those were the first subtle whispers of an overhauled Tory Burch, Spring/Summer 2023 was the watershed moment, a megaphone-amplified announcement that there’s a new Burch in town.
“I left Tory Burch’s Spring 2023 runway show feeling invigorated and slightly confused,” Bonilla recalled. “A brand known for monogrammed glossy flats became semi-nude mesh, sheer skirts, a mix of classic and contemporary. Now, bouncy hems punctuate knitted dresses, chain mail minis and skirt suits that look just as now as they do ‘60s.”
Within the span of a few seasons, Burch’s brand has begun making clothes that look as cool as, well, Tory Burch herself. In 2023, she was nominated to be CFDA’s womenswear designer of the year.
“The magic has always been there in the core classics but we are seeing these pieces metamorphose,” Satenstein said. “Those flats are a cool classic, like a Chanel bag, and anyone can make them their own.”
It’s the same Tory Burch filtered through a slick new lens. The wearability and signature pieces are intact but they’ve been reframed by a new generation of converts and the culture they exist in.
But Burch has never been defined by trends. Her eponymous company’s overhaul feels earned because it’s an organic evolution of the codes that’ve always been at the label’s core.
“She may not be calling it a rebrand, but this feels like playful, feminine, re-energized Tory Burch,” said Bonilla. “I think it’s very cool — it expanded to a new audience of cool girls who aren’t trying to be cool, just are.”
