Portal:Philadelphia/Selected biography archive/15

Tory Burch.

Tory Burch is an American fashion designer who was born, raised, and educated in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. She attended the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, PA, and the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she moved to New York City, where she began a career working with fashion designers and at Harper's Bazaar magazine. She was a copywriter for Polo Ralph Lauren and worked for Vera Wang. She began a fashion label in February 2004. The label was an immediate success and was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey the following year. The label has stores in several large American cities and has lines that are sold in several upscale specialty department stores. Burch has won several fashion awards for her designs. Her fashion label known as "TRB by Tory Burch"—later as "Tory Burch"—began as a business operation in her Upper East Side apartment and very quickly blossomed into eighteen free-standing boutiques. In February 2004, Tory Burch opened a flagship store in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City; the store was almost completely sold out on the first day. She now has locations in Atlanta, Bal Harbour, Bellevue, Chicago, Costa Mesa, Dallas, East Hampton, Houston, Greenwich, Connecticut, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, San Diego, and San Francisco, and her fashion line is carried in Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's. Stories about her and her fashion line have appeared in a broad spectrum of magazines and newspapers, and in April 2005, Winfrey endorsed her line on the The Oprah Winfrey Show.