Tory Burch: Tory Burch

29:21I got in touch with her. And Sally Hansen was the founder. The founder, OK. And the owner of the intellectual property. So you were thinking, oh, well, let's buy this brand and relaunch it. Yes. And so I got her on the phone and literally it was such a shutdown within 20 seconds. She basically said, absolutely not. Wow. And so it was like, whoa, I would done so much work on it. I had called different people. So then I had to regroup. So she wouldn't sell it to you. And but your first step really in thinking of a concept was to build this like brand Bible, this book. Yes. Just the pictures, your mom.

30:05Pictures. Sketches. And old things by Jax, but other things as well. It could have been vintage. It was, you know, pictures of Steve McQueen and different men that looked chic. It was kind of just an image board. But it was books and books. It wasn't a board. But it was like the beginning of what I thought, you know, what became the company. When we come back in just a moment, Tori launches a website, opens her first store, and wrestles with a loaded word. Ambitious. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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35:19Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 2000s, and Tori's idea for reviving the fashion brand Jax has gotten a flat no from the founder. So she's trying to figure out what to do next. I regrouped and thought, OK, we can do this without using Jax. But it was still kind of a similar idea in that it was these classic pieces that were incredibly hard to find and beautifully made. And that was a different price point than what you might find at Valentino or YSL. So for me, it was like, how do we really think about quality and look through a luxury lens, but offer something that can reach more customers?

36:11And it was the beginning of this concept of a retail store and this idea of direct-to-consumer, which was also the opposite of what I was told to do at the time. So in that period of time from like concept to launch, right, you started to talk to people. You partnered up with some former colleagues. And I guess you even brought in some designers to help you kind of sketch out designs of what? Dresses, of tops, of tunics. It was everything. I mean, literally, it was about maybe nine to 11 different categories, whether it was footwear, handbags, swim, ready-to-wear, eyewear. It was jewelry. So I really thought about everything in these image books about sort of what would be interesting to have my take on it.

37:08And so I think it was just about women and they were becoming more and more busy and they wanted to look chic. And I wanted to be a problem solver. A lot of women struggled with how do you put certain things together? How do I wear color? How do I wear print? I always heard that in everywhere I worked. How do you know, women didn't always have the confidence. And I kind of was thinking, like, how do you be irreverent and interesting but still be classic in spirit? And those were some of the things I thought about. So at what point were you comfortable to sort of pull the trigger and say, let's do this?

37:48Let's start to bring some money in? So I remember it. It was really around 2003 when I decided that I wanted to start something. and it was a year of very intense everything to get the idea of the company together. So you needed to obviously raise some money and I know that you and Chris put in some money as well, but starting a fashion brand is not, I mean, it's hard, I think, to do it with 100 ,000 bucks. Like you need significant cash to do it. Yeah, I mean, Chris and I put in$2 million, and we also were funding the beginnings of it. And that was everything from the branding. We worked with a company called Modco to work on our logo and to actual setting up the production in Hong Kong.

38:48And Chris had experience with that. We set up our Hong Kong office before anything. Let me kind of ask you about the logo, which is now kind of iconic. Two Ts, right? Was that, I mean, tell me about that logo. How did that, was that the logo from the very beginning? So, yes. I met with this branding company called Monco. and I said, you know, I wanted to create a logo that we could use in different ways. And I was really interested in Morocco. My parents had spent their honeymoon and then just constantly went back. And then also David Hicks, who was an interior designer that I always loved and my parents loved.

39:37And so I thought there was something interesting that we could combine and that it would be more of a design element. And they came back with different iterations, but many different iterations. And they came up with this one. It was the one that I loved. And it was the first one that I had an emotional connection to. And I would say that wasn't the case for everyone. It was polarizing. And people either loved it or they didn't. And I really loved it. Yeah, because you can, I mean, probably people said, oh, it looks like an iron cross or something like that. You know, we got the cross. We got – it looked Asian.

40:19It looked Moroccan. You know, everyone had a different opinion. And did you ask yourself at the time, like – because it's such an iconic logo today, but you couldn't have known that in 2003 while you were designing it. But did you – were you ever sort of asking the question like, hey, if we just put this logo on a sticker, we want people to know what this is? Was that – I wasn't thinking about it that way. I wasn't thinking like, what is our logo? What's your Nike swoosh? And the way logos mean today. Yeah, it wasn't like that at the time. It was just, you liked it. It was Moroccan. I liked it.

40:56And I felt that it was like, I felt it was impactful and strong. And, you know, I had spent some time studying Chinese art and it reminded me of like never ending the circle. And it was, it just felt vibrant. All right. So you have the logo and you decide that Hong Kong is really the best place for you to set up manufacturing because Hong Kong obviously tailoring textile center for a long time. And so from that base, you could basically establish relationships. Well, I went and I met with factories. And back then, to ask a factory to make 50 or 100 pieces of something was not that interesting for them.

41:40So they had to, I think, going there personally made all the difference. and showing them that if they took a chance on us, that we would stay with them and partner with us, that we would grow with them. So it was a lot of long dinners, a lot of long conversations. And I think also Chris's experience of building a brand absolutely helped as well. And this from the beginning was going to be a fashion brand, but that was also a retail location. You were not, it wasn't like you were going to build a brand and sell it to, you know, Bloomingdale's. No. In fact, I was not thinking about wholesale at all in the beginning.

42:25I was really interested in direct-to-consumer. And I really felt that e-commerce at some point would be worth it. And it was also a way that we could reach more people. But, I mean, because of your experience working in the industry, I mean, you could have had far faster distribution if you had designed a line and then went and talked to a bunch of buyers. Yes, yes. And that could have been a faster way to get your brand out into the world. Well, I think that's sort of a message about our whole company. We've never wanted to take the fast way. We've always wanted to be a patient brand, even from the very beginning.

43:12I've never been inspired by becoming the biggest brand. I wanted to be the most extraordinary brand. What about the name of the company? I mean, originally it was not called Tory Burch, right? No. Well, I didn't want to use my name. And I tried to get, I wish I could remember, maybe 10 names. And all of them were taken or unavailable in some way. And so I thought Tori by TRB, in retrospect, it was such a bad name. But that's what we ended up using. And I think it was probably a year and a half into it or maybe two years into it that I ended up changing it. To Tori Birch. Yes. And so just to kind of, I mean, just imagining this, I mean, you really did a lot of work before.

44:05I mean, you laid the groundwork. You set up a shop, an office in Hong Kong. You had a logo, a name, and then a product line. And so tell me about that product line. So we were designing different products, and I was really interested in sweaters. And we had ready-to-wear. We had the peacoat, the concept of the perfect pant. We had the caftan. I had found a vintage tunic in a Paris flea market for about$8. That became one of the core pieces of our collection. We had a fair amount of my mom's clothing that I was inspired by. And we had totes. We had swim. We had espadrilles. And you would have them.

44:55So you had a lot of products. You had a bunch of things in a lot of different sizes. We did. I wouldn't say we had a tremendous amount of inventory, but we had what we needed. And you were going to be selling things online, which was kind of rare at the time. But you were also going to open a physical store, right? Like a retail location in New York. So tell me about that first store. So we found a location where the rent was very inexpensive, and that was Elizabeth Street. In Tribeca. In Tribeca. There was nothing on the street at the time. There was Cafe Habana and maybe a couple stores. And the store we ended up taking was a furniture store.

45:40So you opened the store February 2004 in Tribeca. During Fashion Week, yep. During Fashion Week. And what did, I mean, creating a tangible luxury, did it mean, I mean, because a lot of what makes something luxury is in the design, right? And how it's designed and how people perceive that design. But were you able to create those luxury products because your manufacturing costs were lower because they were being made in Asia? Well, I think so. I think we were pushing the limit there. And first of all, I had met some different designers. So the attention to detail and design was there. And the quality was incredibly beautiful.

46:29I think I've learned a lot about design, I would say. The pieces were at the time great and they stood out and different. But as I've learned to become a designer over time, you know, it was the first collection. All right. So that store opens and it's a hit. I mean you sell everything out in the first couple days. And I guess around that time, the New York Times wrote a piece about you. is the first time they had written a piece about the brand and they called you ambitious. And that apparently really bothered you. Well, it bothered me in the way that it was asked. It was not. It was it was asked in a way that at the time I sort of was put off by that question.

47:17And I just felt like it was kind of a rude question. You thought the concept of the notion of being ambitious was distasteful for women. You felt that way. That was how you were programmed to think. I think it was in the ether that way back then, that it was okay for men to be ambitious, but not okay for women. And I got a phone call from a friend of mine in business, and it was until she mentioned it to me that I should embrace the word ambition and not shy away from it. It never occurred to me. And as soon as I heard it put that way, it struck me as something that I wanted to change and wanted to correct in myself because I also shied away from that word and I wasn't embracing my own ambition.

48:11And I wasn't saying thank you. Yes, I am ambitious. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, ambition is obviously a critical element of building a company and a brand. And so let me ask you about ambition in 2004. When you opened that shop and you talked about to maybe people you really trusted about what it could be, what did you imagine in 2004? Laura? Well, I imagined something big, and I don't know why, but I felt that I wanted to create a company that reached a lot of women. And I wanted to build something globally. But it was pretty frenetic. It was, you know, a lot of just moving in all directions and just trying to keep up.

49:09I never slept. And it was being a mom. I was working out of my apartment for the first two years. We didn't have an office. So it was doing everything in our kitchen or in our living room. It was taking my kids to school and then getting on the phone until four in the morning, falling asleep on the phone. You know, we ended up having maybe 14 or 15 people working out of our apartment. So I was also contacted from the first day by Bergdorf Goodman. They wanted to buy. They wanted to buy. And so they came into my apartment to see the two racks and the accessories. And that was the beginning of our wholesale collection.

49:58It was the most exhausting year and following by 18 other years. But it was crazy and it was a whirlwind. You got a pretty awesome opportunity a year in when Oprah called or Oprah's producers called to be on for the next big thing that she was doing on fashion, which is amazing. You went out to Chicago to be on the show. I thought it was a joke, first of all. My brothers and I are constantly playing tricks on each other. So I thought this was a total joke. But I realized it wasn't after a moment. So I was completely blown away and said yes. And it was the beginning of a new chapter for us. And did that, I mean, this is 2005, so it's still early e-commerce days.

50:50And I have to assume that e-commerce wouldn't become a significant part of your business for a few more years after that. But did that have an effect? Was there a spike in people ordering stuff online? Yes. And we were so fortunate that we had e-commerce because had we not, it would have been a very different conversation probably. because it really propelled us in a way that I never could have imagined. She told us to back up our site. We had 8 million visitors in our first almost second year in business. I'm curious about how you felt or responded maybe internally to some of the, let's say, criticisms or sniping that began early on.

51:37Here we are almost 20 years since you launched this brand, an enduring brand, a major global brand, which we're going to trace over the course of this conversation. But initially when you launched, there were people saying, well, this is a socialite or this is a vanity project. A vanity project. This is a wealthy couple who just – and it's going to die. And did you feel like you had to prove something when you would hear that? Well, I mean, okay, I can't say it wasn't hurtful because it was. That said, I mean, literally, I hear it every five minutes from my parents. Negativity is noise. Buckle up, thicken your skin.

52:17This is going to be a roller coaster. I mean, I had those conversations. I knew what I was getting into. And I'd also had those snipes before. And it definitely got to me at times. And my mother is my North Star. And whenever it would get to me, I would call her and I hear, you're Tori Robinson, don't you know who you are? Even just when I was little. But always building me up and my brothers and my family, they were like my strength. And, you know, when you go back to the concept of a lot of money, there's perception and reality. And I wouldn't say we had a tremendous amount of money at the time when we launched this company.

53:03And it was not something we took lightly. It was a big risk. It was a big risk. And I really tuned it out. And I learned to tune it out even more. And I think it's a very freeing concept when you don't listen and you don't read and you just keep your head down and keep going and believing in yourself. And, yeah, I mean, you know, occasionally, like, we'll all hear from somebody who will say, oh, you know, how I built this. Guy Raz didn't start a big company. And so what does he know about business, right? There were also people who said, well, Tori Birch is not a designer. What does she know about design?

53:49Oh, my God. So many things like that. And by the way, I didn't even think of myself as a designer either. So there you have it. I was the hardest on myself. So I would say not until about four years ago did I consider myself a designer and proud to say it, even though I loved, I worked with incredible designers over the years. But personally, I'm the hardest on myself. So, yes, she wasn't a designer. People would come up to me and say, do you go to the office? I mean, I'm working 13-hour days. So for me to hear something like that is pretty shocking.

54:29Let me come back in just a moment. Tori faces a crisis when the most important partnership in her life falls apart. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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57:14hey welcome back to how i built this so it's 2006 and two years into the business tori birch the brand has already gotten a boost from being on oprah but tori birch the founder is still doing everything she can to build momentum we also built it in a very scrappy way. We were doing trunk shows. I was taking suitcases of product to Greenwich and to Atlanta and to Palm Beach. And I would have, I would go places where I had friends. They would host a party. They would host a party. It was literally like Avon. I was kind of always obsessed with the Avon model. And it was kind of, they were becoming in term brand ambassadors and it was becoming word of mouth.

58:02And it was just building like that. I want to ask you about what is now sort of an iconic shoe that you designed came out in 2006, which was named after your mom. It's called the Riva. Lots of people listening know that shoe. It's a ballet flat with the gold double T medallion, like on the top of the shoe the top of the foot. And that went crazy. That shoe just... Tell me about the design of that shoe and how it landed. What was it about that moment in time and that design that just met? It wasn't a heel. It wasn't a pump. People were buying stilettos. It was sex in the city. People were... Yeah, right.

58:48Right? They were buying Manolo Blahniks. It was almost the opposite. It was about comfort and it was about this concept of a ballet flat. And I always felt that a ballet flat was super classic. And I'll never forget it because Bridget Klein, who had joined our company from Michael Kors, she became our president. And I'll never forget her boss at the time, John Idol, told her it was career suicide coming to work for us. I was in this meeting with Vince Camuto and he was a footwear manufacturer. He had his own collections, but he had called us because he was interested in a licensing deal. And I rightfully also, you know, probably with Chris too, we weren't excited about licensing in general.

59:36I wanted to be extremely careful about licensing. Because it would dilute the brand or something? It was dilutive. And I had seen so many wonderful brands do too much licensing. And it scared me. So we set up a production agreement. It was a very different kind of deal. So we talked to Vince about this concept of this ballet flat, and I had this idea of our logo being the design element, not necessarily a logo. So I put it on our toe and on this deconstructed, super comfortable shoe. And that was the beginning of the Riva ballet flat, which then all of a sudden just was worn by Jessica Alba and Cameron Diaz and Paris Hilton, Katie Holmes.

1:00:23I could go on and on. How did you, I mean, you were still a pretty small company at the time and you were well connected because of your experience in the industry. But did you have a strategic way to get those things to those kinds of people? This is pre-influencer. Influencers were actually real humans, like, you know, getting photographed. It wasn't social media. So did you have a way to get those things to them? Well, I think, again, it was through friends. And we also had a wonderful young girl named Samantha Gregory. She came to do our PR. And we gave it maybe to some people. I don't remember exactly.

1:01:07But it ended up becoming this sort of word of mouth type of thing. And I think that was kind of something that's missing today because with instant gratification of all this social media, you don't have that concept of building and sort of learning about something. Everything's out there. You were, you know, running this business, you know, small team and it's growing and you're getting more attention. And in this very formative time in the business, your marriage collapses, your marriage ends. You and Chris split. Tell me what was happening. I mean, it was the most difficult period of my life.

1:01:57And, you know, to have a marriage fall apart when you have six children that are all very young. And our parents were great friends. And our families were completely intertwined. Like, both of our families are from Philadelphia. Right. And they became very close. Wow. So I was very close to my sister-in-laws and my brother-in-laws and all the cousins. and I'm a huge family person, so you can imagine it was excruciating. And the boys were really young. They were, Zoya was probably four and Henry and Nick were seven. And then I had my stepdaughters that were all in their teens. And they were like my kids also.

1:02:46When I married Chris, I made the decision that I would treat all of our kids the same. And so to go through something like that and do it in a public way when you're the most private person and wanting to protect your kids and your family, it was incredibly difficult. How did you compartmentalize the personal side of – and it's obviously a professional side too because Chris was involved with the business and, you know, was Tori Birch, right? And so how did you kind of compartmentalize what was happening in your personal life and then show up to work and run the business and smile? Yeah, it was – one thing I am good at is compartmentalizing things.

1:03:36And I would say even though that's a strength, this was incredibly difficult. I think everyone likes to get this scoop on what's going on with divorces and, you know, it becomes everyone's story. And I just, you know, for me, I really do live my life where I disengage with that kind of, like, gossip. And particularly when you're the focus of the gossip, it's not fun. I had Vanity Fair writing stories on me. And also the company was taking off. So you had this like family type of business that you had employees you wanted to protect. You had your actual family you wanted to protect. You wanted to protect the business and protect yourself.

1:04:27Because when you're being written about. It's hard. That said, I found the inner strength and courage. And my mom always said to me and dad that you wake up and tomorrow's a whole new day. And I kept thinking that. The tomorrows took longer than I'd hoped. But it was how I looked at it. that next year your father passed away as well. I mean, I can't imagine how just challenging of a time that was between the end of your marriage, your dad passing away, I know you were really close with him, and running the business. Yeah, I would say my father passing away, as you said, I get choked up because that was probably hands down the hardest out of anything.

1:05:20And it was just, you know, he had been sick, but he was better and he was getting better. And then he had a heart attack. So it was incredibly sudden. And it was just on top of everything, but it really just made everything pale in comparison. It just was, I saw the toll it was taking on my mother. And, you know, listen, he lived a great long life, but he was still my dad. And, you know, it was I was just not expecting it. One of the decisions that you you took in the in the period of time after after your split and what was going on was you you had you had your your brother, Robert, come and join the company.

1:06:07And I'm curious about that. I mean, it seems like you can imagine the conversations with Chris. I mean, it also seems like you really you've always kind of leaned on on you talk a lot about your mom and, of course, about your dad. But your dad was gone. And it seems like particularly Robert, your brother, was like a rock to somebody really. He's been a second father figure to me. He's nine years older and he's always been a pillar for me, a rock, as you said. He's also brilliant. And when I finally convinced him to come on board and be part of the company, he was doing other things. He was working on, I think, selling a company.

1:06:50And so I was so grateful that he came. And not only, as it turns out, has he been in-house legal in new business development. He's helped me build the business over the years. And he's like, he also personifies our culture. In 2009, you were finally able to launch that foundation that you wanted to launch, the Tory Burch Foundation. And tell me about the idea behind it. What did you want it to be? Well, so I wasn't exactly sure in the beginning of when I started the company. I knew I wanted to help women and children. And what I realized is that I was an entrepreneur and there were a lot of exceptional women in business that weren't as lucky enough to have the access that I had.

1:07:41And so I thought maybe that I could help women get access to all kinds of things, whether it would be capital or each other or other business leaders. And so in 2009, that was what we started. And even though we were doing a lot of work, I wanted real numbers. So we partnered with Bank of America to help women get access to lower interest loans. And their commitment of$100 million was something that I was so excited about. And that's something that I, as a leader in business, would love to impart on startups and other businesses, that doing good is good for business. And that's something that in the early days, I was pretty much laughed out of the room.

1:08:31And when I talked about building this global lifestyle brand so I could start a foundation, I was told never to say that. And that business and philanthropy don't go hand in hand. And I was told that more than 10 times by many people. And so to see that sea change happen today is very gratifying. All right. Around, I think around 2011, you had, you and Chris had separated. But he was still, he still owned a significant amount of the company. And one of the, I think, I imagine the challenges was he launched his own apparel brand in 2011 called Sea Wonder.

1:09:19And I don't know, what was your feeling when that – because he opened a store. Yes. And did you – were you aware that it was going to happen? Was it a surprise? You know, I was aware he was working on a concept and I was fully supportive of that. Until I went to see the store. And that was the first I had seen anything that he was working on. And how did you, what did you think when you saw the store? Yeah, I thought it was a big problem because it was taking cues from our brand and doing it in a way that would be damaging from our intellectual property standpoint. Basically, it looked like Tory Burch stuff.

1:10:03I mean, I would say it sort of looked like some of our stuff, and it was close enough that it was a big problem. So this, I guess, is in the midst of a period of some back and forth kind of sniping and challenges. And Chris is not here to – I've met Chris before. To defend himself. To defend himself. So I'm going to try to step in as best I can. But imagine from his perspective, he's thinking, well, you know, yeah, I've got a lot of experience doing apparel and I'm entitled to start my own brand. But he still owned a significant stake in Tory Burch and I'm assuming was was on the board or had some influence there.

1:10:45So he was on the board. What did that mean? I mean, did you have conversations with him and say, hey, you know. This is a problem and we need to deal with it because this doesn't work. and he's sitting in board meetings and having proprietary information and starting something that would be brand damaging. So we wanted him to change his concept and then he sued us. He sued me personally and my entire board. And I imagine this was fodder for the press. Oh, they loved it. Right. It was like a dream come true for the press. Yeah. Yeah. And so all of a sudden you're once again in the press for the wrong reasons or reasons you didn't want to be in.

1:11:29And so at that point, presumably, you kind of did not communicate much. I mean, we had to because we also had young children and a lot of children. But I mean, we both tried to parent the best we could. I mean, litigation in any circumstance is stressful. But, you know, companies and leaders are kind of they have to expect it sometimes and you got to just march on. But not from within. Not within. It's different. And also I had to protect our company and our employees. You can imagine it was confusing. So you guys countersued. Yes, we did. And your countersuit basically, I think, said, hey, this is a knockoff brand.

1:12:20And you guys are getting ready to go to court. Yeah. And luckily, we didn't have to. Luckily, you settled. By the end of the year, you settled. Literally, we were in Hawaii. I'll never forget it. My brother didn't leave a hotel room for probably two weeks. He hadn't shaved. And we were lucky enough to find two extraordinary partners to buy Chris out. And basically, it was in everyone's interest that this did not go to trial. Yes. It would have just been a complete waste of everything. So that was it. Chris, at that point, he sold his shares or most of his shares. Yeah. And that was something that was a relief.

1:13:07I think bringing BDT Capital and General Atlantic in was an incredible result. These are the partners that came in and bought his shares out. Private equity partners that bought Chris and some other people out. But I would say it was challenging. I am happy to say recently, like four or five years ago, we are the best of friends. We've gotten through the mess of everything. He told me it was a 10-year misunderstanding, which I had to laugh. All right. So now you are fully, I mean, it's sort of pretty much resolved and you can focus on the business. By 2013, you had 54 stores,$800 million in sales.

1:13:54Today, I think it's closer to 350 stores. And there's something interesting about the stores, too, that I don't know if all of them do this, but I know that they would have mini fridges stocked with beer and soda. They'd have iPads for kids. So tell me about that, about having all those things in the store. I mean, I've always wanted it to be welcoming. And I think in retail, sometimes that's not always the case, that customers are intimidated. And so I always thought it would be great to have an environment where people could stay and get to know our sales team and sort of get their stories as well.

1:14:35And I think you get a lot of insight into the customer that way. So we tried to make it an environment that, even from the beginning, that felt like you're walking into a living room. And when you sort of stepped down as CEO, and that happened in 2018, and now your husband, Pierre-Yves Roussel, is the CEO. And he was – obviously, we were together before he was CEO. And he came from LVMH where he was a CEO there. And you were CEO for I think 14 years or something like that. But it's a long time for anyone to— Well, it's too long in retrospect. And, you know, what I realized is I learned my passion over the years, and it wasn't operating a business.

1:15:25It was really designing the product and the creativity. And being able to be focused just on design and the product creation, I think, has been transformative for the business and for the product for sure. I mean, it went from me spending 30 % of my time on it to 100%. And I do feel that we're just hitting our stride. Obviously, starting an enduring brand in any category is really hard. But if you were advising somebody who wanted to start an enduring fashion brand today, I mean, could they take your playbook and do that today? Or is it just the business changed so much? Yeah, I mean, I think there's elements of our playbook, but certainly they need a new one.

1:16:15And I think that we need a new one. And we always need a new one. And we're always, we have our core strategy, and that's not changing. But the world is changing so quickly. And we need to be evolving and changing with it and be intellectually curious and not just jump on everything. Just think about what's important that applies to our business. Tori, do you imagine a day when you might sell this company or do you see a future where it's like more like Estee Lauder where Tori Birch is a family business in perpetuity? You know, I just – I don't know the answer to that. I'm so not ready to sell this company or I hope that we're here for a long time.

1:17:07And Pure Eve and I love working together. We love working with the team that we have. And we have so much we want to do. So I don't think about selling the company. That's not something that I'm actively thinking about. I think it's a luxury to be private. Yeah. Wow. When you think about this journey that you've had and where this brand and business is today, how much of it do you think has to do with the work and the skills that you brought and how much would you attribute to luck? I think it's definitely both because there's been a lot of luck along the way and I'm an extremely superstitious person, so I realize that.

1:17:53but there has been such a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this company by so many people and me included. So I think they go hand in hand and I think that we always need a little luck and I'm hoping that that continues but I don't see a world where we're not working and doing inspiring work but it's hard work that's ahead. That's Tori Birch, founder and executive chairman of Tori Birch. Just one more question for you. When you're not wearing Tori Birch, who do you wear? Oh, well, I do wear a lot. In fact, I just went to the Met and I wore Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld. By the way, when you see people wearing costumes like Jared Leto wearing a catsuit with a giant cat head, how does he sit down for dinner?

1:18:52I know. Actually, they have a lot of trouble. Even one of our dresses, I felt badly because it's quite large. How do they do that? Is he holding the cat head? Well, no, I probably think the cat head had a chair next to him. I don't know that for sure because I wasn't seated next to him. But the creativity is pretty spectacular. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. and it's totally free. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramteen Ereblewe.

1:19:25It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Liz Metzger, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

1:19:51If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.