RENAISSANCE WOMAN

After 20 years in business, designer Tory Burch is capturing the zeitgeist as never before. On the release of her latest perfume, Sublime, she talks about her first memories of scent and why there's never been a better time to be a designer in New York.

- MADELAINE CLARK

Long gone are the days when the name Tory Burch conjured images of Reva ballet flats, waspy Upper East Siders, or ladies who lunch. “I feel like a new designer,” Burch says. Given the fickle nature of fashion, we’re

often taught to think of a brand’s survival in dog years; one day you’re in and next you’re yesterday’s news. Yet after 20 years in business—and thanks to an experimental new approach to design—Burch has staged what netizens are calling “the Toryssance”, and she’s firmly back in the hot seat. Not that she ever truly left the spotlight, but there’s a new edge and cachet to Burch’s aesthetic, which won her the American Womenswear Designer of the Year award at the Council of Fashion Designers in 2023—and this year she was named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Being able to turn her focus more to design is thanks to her husband, Pierre-Yves Roussel, the former CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, who joined as Tory Burch CEO in 2019. A year later, under Roussel’s leadership, the brand partnered with Shiseido to develop a new line of perfumes. The latest is Sublime.

Burch describes the perfume, which has notes of leather, delicate rose, osmanthus flower, earthy vetiver, and mandarin, as the “perfect balance of sensuality and strength”. Collaborating on the masculine-yet-feminine scent with perfumers Rodrigo Flores-Roux and Christine Hassan, Burch also enlisted creative director Malin Ericson on the architectural flacon. “Sublime represents the evolution of our brand and where we are today,” she says, adding that “fearless” Kendall Jenner, with whom she shares similar values, was the perfect female to front the campaign.

On the release of Sublime, Burch talks about her journey of reinvention and celebrating 20 years as a brand.

The campaign for Sublime was shot by celebrated photographers Mert Atlas and Marcus Piggot. How does it reflect the scent itself?