Two days after her fall fashion show, Tory Burch was at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York celebrating her company’s new pop-up and exclusive travel-inspired capsule. She also participated in an on-stage conversation with Karamo Brown, star of “Queer Eye,” about her fashion show, nurturing corporate culture, boosting women’s self esteem and key influences in their lives.
Topping the agenda was a discussion about Burch’s fashion show, which was held Sunday at Sotheby’s in New York. “The show went well. We worked so hard for a year in advance. I often say it’s like planning a wedding a year in advance, and it’s over in nine minutes, and then, people weigh in,” Burch said. She explained that her influence was the Dutch Master artist, Judith Leyster.
Brown said he knows someone who once worked for Burch and loved it. That woman told Brown about the team environment and that as a young woman not high on the design team, Burch allowed her to have a voice and made her feel important. Burch asked for her name, and why is she a former employee, and Brown replied, “She just moved on.”
According to Burch, the reason she started her company was to be able to start a foundation for women. She also said employees spend so much time at the company, “you better behave like a family.” She has instilled some of her late father’s values, which she calls “Buddy’s Values,” into the firm such as kindness, integrity, being straightforward, working with excellence and having humor. She said that culture can change, and can be fixed.
Brown spoke about having four older sisters and being raised by his mother. He’ll have conversations with men in the cast to check their behavior and look at how they’re behaving toward women, and will ask, “Are you OK with being that way for your daughter or your mother?” Burch said equal pay for women should be a given. He said when he talks to fathers about their daughters, they agree.