Here’s a surprise. Who would have thought that the preppy New York designer Tory Burch would undergo a cool transformation of her fashion label during the pandemic? We at ACHTUNG certainly didn’t, and we were more than surprised to take in her latest runway show during New York fashion week in February where she presented a beautifully tailored and colored collection of cool.

The weekends in the Hamptons or Caribbean getaway clothes of the Upper East Side set, where Burch herself comes from, are gone and in is the wardrobe of a city slicker. Tory Burch clearly spends more time in Manhattan these days than in the country. And what’s most important, she spends time in the design studio, and she lets go. “I actually look for mistakes and imperfections in my designs and I only realized that during the pandemic when I spent more time alone in the studio and of course because now I am only focused on design as I have a CEO,” Burch explained to us backstage. Her husband Pierre-Yves Roussel has now taken that position. It helps, of course, that he is the former head of the LVMH fashion group who brought in a lot of experience while championing the success of JW Anderson at Loewe and Phoebe Philo at Celine. And he is known to be a good designer whisperer. But we’d say he is sorely missed at the LVMH group. Burch is taking things personal now and is designing that way. No longer does she get inspired by jet set places and people, but by designers like Claire McCardell. She is now more of a utilitarian sportswear designer who still has a refined taste and vision but seems more anchored and grounded. Her show invitation of an ancient sculpture showed this new key idea. Burch must have spent weeks in the studio to sculpt her tailoring onto the bodies of her fit looking models. The single-breasted jackets looked terrific and well sculpted on the body. Mixed with interesting colors like acid green and a dash of sex appeal as in her corset-based outfits, this is a winning step forward for the house.