Tory Burch mixes daywear and sportswear for luxury line

Designer Tory Burch says she’s noticed women don’t want to have rules about what they can wear and when they can wear it. They want to dress on their own terms and she’s helping them do it with her new collection.

The first look on the runway set the tone of her Fall/Winter show at New York Fashion Week Monday, with a dark, tech-knit track jacket with sporty yellow stripe, paired with wool boucle pants.

Pandemic living has spurred Burch to combine daywear with activewear to reflect a fresh approach to fashion and a desire for less structure and more comfort, without sacrificing style. Hand beaded T-shirts and quarter-zip pullovers made of performance jersey underlined the high-low fashion sensibility.

“I love sport and we have a sport collection, but we wanted to look at that through a luxury lens, and I see women wearing those type of things and mixing it for evening and that’s kind of the interesting part,” Burch said in an interview after the show.

“I started just looking at women in New York on the street and I’ve seen a shift in the way they embrace creativity and their individualism,” she said. “I thought it’d be really interesting to think about geometry and women and bodies.”

Many of the designs featured asymmetrical points and edges in shirt tails, cuffs, and skirt hems. High rise pants were tight at the waist but then loose and billowing in pegged and harem styles. There were neutral-colored coats, some short and belted to accentuate the waist, others that fell to mid-calf.

Black and earthy brown dominated the looks, but there were playful splashes of bright colors like chartreuse and fire engine red. Burch said she got some inspiration from the Memphis design movement from the 1980’s, that focused on postmodern decor featuring abstract and asymmetrical shapes and bright colors.

“I was actually roughly looking at Memphis and some of the pottery and carpets, but I also intentionally didn’t want it to reflect a decade. But I knew that color and vibrancy and joy had to be part of it because I think we’re all ready to move on from the last two and a half years,” she said.

The final looks were several long sleeved, ankle-length form-fitting dresses made of jersey, in a dark palette with geometrical shapes in bright colors like yellow and red. Burch’s farewell offering of sparkle and flair was a long, black semi-sheer turtleneck jersey dress, adorned with a sequined fishnet pattern, emblazoned with a silver halfmoon.

The dramatic venue was the 25th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper that overlooked the New Yorker hotel with floor to ceiling windows surrounding the runway, showcasing the New York skyline at sundown. As the models strutted the catwalk, the giant red neon “New Yorker” sign glowed in the distance, with the Tory Burch logo projected underneath.

Uma Thurman and Aimee Lou Wood sat near Vogue editor Anna Wintour in the front row. This fashion week has more in-person shows than 2021’s schedule, when the pandemic forced many fashion houses to offer only virtual shows.

Katie Holmes said she felt the energy was coming back to New York. “I love Tory Burch. I love her clothing and she’s a phenomenal woman, so I’m so happy to come out and support her … and it’s fun and inspiring to be around people creating.”