Vogue

When it comes to building a relevant brand in 2019, the common refrain is that it has to be about more than good product. Millennials are looking for brands whose values align with their own; they want to feel good about where they’re putting their money. It’s symptomatic of social media and the rise of digital-first brands, which are expected to connect with customers largely through their own content (and often in lieu of traditional adverting). Of course, you can’t create good content without a good story—and if it centers around hot topics like sustainability and activism, even better.

Plenty of brands are promoting those issues, some with varying degrees of honesty. But Tory Burch has never had to worry about being authentic; she’s been ahead of the curve since day one. For starters, her brand—now worth $2.5 billion—was born in 2004 with a mission to combine luxury with affordable prices. That’s the m.o. of practically every new company in 2019, but at the time, it was prophetic. Burch understood both what women wanted and where the industry was headed. A few years later, in 2009, she built the Tory Burch Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the empowerment of women entrepreneurs and advocates for gender equality. It’s important to note that this was before Instagram, before the days of viral social media campaigns, and before we had to be dubious about a brand’s “do good-ing” efforts. Burch’s vision was sincere; it wasn’t driven by the potential upside of becoming a “face” of feminism, though that’s precisely what so many women have come to think of her as.

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