Tory Burch

In an impressively short time, Tory Burch has created a $3.5 billion lifestyle brand based on . . . herself. Raised in a historic Georgian house on rolling acres in Pennsylvania, she was a tomboyish kid more likely to be found up a tree than in a dress. Still, she soaked up plenty of style from her parents. Her father, heir to a paper-cup fortune, lined his suit jackets with Hermès scarves; her mother favored the easy patrician chic of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Burch studied art history and then honed her public relations chops with jobs at Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, and Narciso Rodriguez. Over the years she envisioned the Tory Burch empire to come, amassing tear sheets from magazines and old photos in an ever-burgeoning scrapbook. She launched her first collection out of the Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan that she shared with her then-husband and brand cofounder, Chris Burch. A downtown boutique followed, and, as an indicator of the phenomenal retail success to come, nearly all inventory was cleared out on opening day.

Burch set her sights on an overlooked market: aspirational mid-career women and Bergdorf moms seeking affordable quality with the timelessness of good taste. Fixing her price points lower than the competition’s, she bridged the gap between the haves and the have-nots, in the hopes that both would want to wear her wares. “Luxury, as I see it, is not exclusionary,” she told Town & Country in 2008.

Early on, a glowing endorsement from Oprah Winfrey gave the brand the proverbial Midas touch. And it has been winged victory ever since, with urban ballerinas snapping up the trendy Reva flat, emblazoned with Burch’s ubiquitous double-T medallion, in enough colors to put a crayon box to shame. Color is an important aspect of Tory Sport, too. In typical Burch fashion, the performance activewear line launched in 2015 has set the bar high for future designer athleisure collections.